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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No.. 

ShelLiS^. 
4-?»^3 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BROWNING'S 
SHORTER POEMS 



JHacmilIan'0 Pocket lEnglisf) Clasgicg, 



A Senes of English Texts, edited for use In 

Secondary Schools, with Critical 

Introductions, Notes, etc. 



l6mo. 



Levanteen. 



25c. each. 



Macaulay's Essay on Addison. 
Macaulay's Essay on Milton. 
Tennyson's The Princess. 
Eliot's Silas Marner. 
Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. 
Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. 
Burke's Speech on Conciliation. 
Pope's Homer's Iliad. 
Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. 
Shakespeare's Macbeth. 
Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley. 
Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. 
Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. 
Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 
Milton's Comus, Lycidas. and Other Poems. 
Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal. 
Milton's Paradise Lost, Books I and IL 
Browning's Shorter Poems. 
Irving's Alhambra. 



others to follow. 




ROBERT BROWNING 



BROWNING'S 
SHORTER POEMS 



SELECTED AND EDITED 

BY 

FEANKLIK T. BAKEE, A.M. 

PBOFBSSOK OF ENGLISH IN TBACHEES COLLBGB, 
COLUMBIA UNIVKESITT 



Weto fork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1899 

All rights reserved 



47557 

Copyright, 1899 
By the MACMILLAN . company 

TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 



-•; '^ V ^' 




SECOND COPY, 



WortoaoK Press 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. 






PREFACE 



These selections from the poetry of Eobert Brown- 
ing have been made with especial reference to the 
tastes and capacities of readers of the high-school age. 
Every poem included has been found by experience 
to be within the grasp of boys and girls. Most of 
Browning's best poetrj^ is within the ken of any 
reader of imagination and diligence. To the reader 
who lacks these, not only Brov^^ning, but the great 
world of literature, remains closed: Browning is not 
the only poet who requires close study. The diffi- 
culties he offers are, in his best poems, not more re- 
pellent to the thoughtful reader than the nut that 
protects and contains the kernel. To a boy or girl of 
active mind, the difficulty need rarely be more than a 
pleasant challenge to the exercise of a little patience 
and ingenuity. 

Browning, when at his best in vigor, clearness, and 
beaut}^, is peculiarly a poet for young people. His 
freedom from sentimentality, his liveliness of concep- 



IV PREFACE 

tion and narration, his high optimism, and his interest 
in the things that make for the life of the soul, ap- 
peal to the imagination and the feelings of youth. 

The present edition attempts but little in the way 
of criticism. The notes cover such matters as are not 
readily settled by an appeal to the dictionary, and sug- 
gest, in addition, questions that are designed to help 
in interpretation and appreciation. 

Teachers' College, New York, 
July, 1899. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Life of Browning vii 

Browning as Poet . ....... x 

Appreciations ......... xx 

Chronological List of Browning's Works . . xxiv 

Bibliography . ..... ... xxvii 

The Pied Piper of Hamelin 1 

Tray 15 

Incident of the French Camp . . . . . .17 

*' How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix " 19 

Herv6 Riel 22 

Pheidippides .30 

My Star 40 

Evelyn Hope 41 

Love among the Ruins .♦ 43 

Misconceptions ......... 47 

Natural Magic 48 

Apparitions 49 

A Wall 50 

Confessions 51 

A Woman's Last Word .53 

A Pretty Woman ........ 55 

Youth and Art 58* 

V 



VI CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Tale 61 

Songs from Pippa Passes 67 

The Lost Leader 69 

Apparent Pailure . . ... . . .71 

Pears and Scruples 74 

Instans Tyrannus 76 

The Patriot ......... 79 

The Boy and the Angel 81 

Memorabilia 85 

Why I am a Liberal 86 

Prospice 87 

Epilogue to Asolando 88 

*'De Gustibus— " 90 

The Italian in England .92 

My Last Duchess 99 

The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church . 101 

The Laboratory 107 

Home Thoughts from Abroad 109 

Up at a Villa — Down in the City 110 

A Toccata of Galuppi's 116 

AbtVogler 120 

Eabbi Ben Ezra 127 

A Grammarian's Funeral . . . . . . . 137 

Andrea del Sarto 143 

Caliban upon Setebos 155 

'' Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came " . ... 168 

An Epistle .177 

Saul • ... 190 

Notes 219 



INTRODUCTION 



LIFE OF BROWNING 

EoBEBT Browning was born in Camberwell, London, 
May 7, 1812. He was contemporary with Tennyson, 
Dickens, Thackeray, Lowell, Emerson, Hawthorne, 
Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Dumas, Hugo, Mendelssohn, 
Wagner, and a score of other men famous in art and 
science. 

Browning's good fortune began with his birth. His 
father, a clerk in the Bank of. England, possessed 
ample means for the education of his children. He 
had artistic and literary tastes, a mind richly stored 
with philosophy, history, literature, and legend, some 
repute as a maker of verses, and a liberality that led 
him to assist his gifted son in following his bent. 
From his father Robert inherited his literary tastes 
and his vigorous health ; in his father he found a 
critic and companion. His mother was described by 
Carlyle as a type of the true Scotch gentlewoman. 



Vill INTRODUCTION 

Her "fathomless charity/' her love of music, and her 
deep religious feeling reappear in the poet. 

Free from struggles with adversity, and devoid of 
public or stirring incidents, the story of Browning's 
life is soon told. It was the life of a scholar and man 
of letters, devoted to the study of poetry, philosophy, 
history ; to the contemplation of the lives of men and 
women ; and to the exercise of his chosen vocation. 

His school life was of meagre extent. He attended 
a private academy, read at home under a tutor, and 
for two years attended the University of London. 
When asked in his later life whether he had been to 
Oxford or Cambridge, he used to say, "Italy was my 
University." And, indeed, his many poems on Italian 
themes bear testimony to the profound influence of 
Italy upon him. In his teens, he came under the in- 
fluence of Pope and Byron, and wrote verses after 
their styles. Then Shelley came by accident in his 
way, and became to the boy the model of poetic ex- 
cellence. 

In 1833 appeared his first published poem, Pauline. 
It bears the marks of his peculiar genius ; it has the 
germs of his merits and his defects. Though not 
widely read, it received favorable notice from some of 
the critics. In 1835 appeared Paracelsus, in 1837 
Strafford, in 1840 Sordello. From this time on, for 
the fifty remaining years of his life, his poetic activity 



LIFE OF BROWNING ix 

hardly ceased, though, his poetry was of uneven ex- 
cellence. The middle period of his work, beginning 
with Bells and Pomegranates in 1842, and ending with 
Balaustion^ s Adventure (a transcript of Euripides' Al- 
cestis) in 1871, was by far the richest in poetic value. 

In 1846 he married Elizabeth Barrett, the poet. 
They left England for Italy, where, because of Mrs. 
Browning's feeble health, they continued to reside 
until her death in 1861. The remainder of his life 
was divided between England and Italy, with frequent 
visits to southern France. His reputation as a poet 
had steadily grown. He was now one of the best 
known men in England. His mental activity continued 
unabated to the end. Within the last thirty years of 
his life he wrote The Ring and the Book — hi^ longest 
work, one of the longest and, intellectually, one of the 
greatest, of English poems ; translated the Agamemnon 
of ^schylus and the Alcestis of Euripides ; published 
many shorter poems ; kept up the studies which had 
always been his labor and his pastime; and found 
leisure also to know a wide circle of men and women. 
William Sharp gives a pleasing picture of the last 
years of his life: "Everybody wished him to come 
and dine; and he did his utmost to gratify Every- 
body. He saw everything ; read all the notable books ; 
kept himself acquainted with the leading contents of 
the journals and magazines ; conducted a large corre- 



X INTRODUCTION 

spondence; read new French, German, and Italian 
books of mark ; read and translated Euripides and 
^schylus ; knew all the gossip of the literary clubs, 
salons, and the studios; was a frequenter of after- 
noon tea-parties ; and then, over and above it, he 
was Browning : the most profoundly subtle mind that 
has exercised itself in poetry since Shakespeare." ^ 

He died in Venice, on December 12, 1889, and was 
buried in the poet's corner of Westminster Abbey. 

BROWNING AS POET 

The three generations of readers who have lived 
since Browning's first publication have seen as many 
attitudes taken toward one of the ablest poetic spirits 
of the century. To the first he appeared an enigma, 
a writer hopelessl}^ obscure, perhaps not even clear in 
his own mind, as to the message he wished to deliver; 
to the second he appeared a prophet and a philosopher, 
full of all wisdom and subtlety, too deep for common 
mortals to fathom with line and plummet, — conceal- 
ing below green depths of ocean priceless gems of 
thought and feeling; to the third, a poet full of in- 
equalities in conception and expression, who has done 
many good things well and has made many grave 
failures. 

"^ ^h.s>Y^'^ Life of Browning, 



BROWNING AS POET xi 

No poet in our generation has fared so ill at the 
hands of the critics. Already the Browning library 
is large. Some of the criticism is good ; much of it, 
regarding the author as philosopher and symbolist, is 
totally askew. Eeams have been written in interpre- 
tation of Childe Roland, an imaginative fantasy com- 
posed in one day. Abstruse ideas have been wrested 
from the simple story of My Last Duchess, His poetry 
has been the stamping-ground of theologians and the 
centre of prattling literary circles. In this tortuous 
maze of futile criticism the one thing lost sight of is 
the fact that a poet must be judged by the standards 
of art. It must be confessed, however, that Browning 
is himself to blame for much of the smoke of commen- 
tary that has gathered round him. He has often 
chosen the oblique expression where the direct would 
serve better ; often interpolated his own musing sub- 
tleties between the reader and the life he would pre- 
sent ; often followed his theme into intricacies beyond 
his own power to resolve into the simple forms of art. 
Thus it has come about that misguided readers became 
enigma hunters, and the poet their Sphinx. 

The real question with Browning, as with any poet, 
is. What is his work and worth as an artist ? What 
of human life has he presented, and how clear and 
true are his presentations ? What passions, what 
struggles, what ideals, what activities of men has he 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

added to the art world ? What beauty and dignity, 
what light, has he created ? How does he view life : 
with what of hope, or aspiration, or strength ? These 
questions may be discussed under his sense and 
mastery of form, and under his views of human life. 

Browning's sense of form has often been attacked 
and defended. The first impression upon reading him 
is of harshness amounting to the grotesque. Ehynies 
often clash and jangle like the music of savages. 
Such rhymes as 

" Eancy the fabric . . . 
Ere mortar dab brick," 

strain dignity and beauty to the breaking-point. 
Archaic and bizarre words are pressed into service to 
help out the rhyme and metre ; instead of melodic 
rhythm there are harsh and jolting combinations ; 
until the reader brought up in the traditions of 
Shakespeare, Milton, and Tennyson is fain to cry out. 
This is not poetry ! 

In internal form as well, Browning often defies the 
established laws of literature. Distorted and elliptical 
sentences, long and irrelevant parentheses, curious 
involutions of thought, and irregular or incoherent 
development of the narrative or the picture, often 
leave the reader in despair even of the meaning. ISTor 
can these departures from orderly beauty always be 



BROWNING AS POET Xlll 

defended by the exigencies of the subjects. They do 
not lit the theme. They are the discords of a musician 
who either has not mastered his instrument or is not 
sensitive to all the liner effects. Some of his work stands 
out clear from these faults : A Toccata of Gahipjn^Sy 
Love Among the Ruins, the Songs from Pippa Passes, 
Apparitions, Andrea del Sarto, and a score of others 
might be cited to show that Browning could write 
with a sense of form as true, and an ear as delicate, as 
could any poet of the century, except Tennyson. 

To Browning belongs the credit of having created a 
new poetic form, — the dramatic monologue. In this 
form the larger number of his poems are cast. Among 
the best examples in this volume are My Last Duchess, 
The Bishop Orders his Tomb, The Laboratory, and Con- 
fessions. One person only is speaking, but reveals the 
presence, action, and thoughts of the others who are in 
the scene at the same time that he reveals his own 
character, as in a conversation in which but one voice 
is audible. The dramatic monologue has in a pecul- 
iar degree the advantages of compression and vivid- 
ness, and is, in Browning's hands, an instrument of 
great power. 

The charge of obscurity so often made against 
Browning's poetry must in part be admitted. As has 
been said above he is often led off by his many-sided 
interests into irrelevancies and subtleties that inter- 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

fere with simplicity and beauty. His compressed 
style and his fondness for unusual words often make 
an unwarranted demand upon the reader's patience. 
Such passages are a challenge to his admirers and a 
repulse to the indifferent. Sometimes, indeed, the ore 
is not worth the smelting; often it yields enough 
to reward the greatest patience. 

Browning, like all great poets, knew life widely 
and deeply through men and books. He was born 
in London, near the great centres of the intellectual 
movements of his time ; he travelled much, especially 
in Italy and France ; he read widely in the literatures 
and philosophies of many ages and many lands ; and 
so grew into the cosmopolitanism of spirit that be- 
longed to Chaucer and to Shakespeare. 

In all art human life is the matter of ultimate in- 
terest. To Browning this was so in a peculiar degree. 
In the epistolary preface to Sordello, written thirty 
years after its first publication, he said : " My stress 
lay on the incidents in the development of a soul : 
little else is worth study.'' This interest in '' the de- 
velopment of a soul " is the keynote of nearly all his 
work. To it are directly traceable many of the most 
obvious excellences and defects of his poetry. He 
came to look below the surfaces of things for the 
soul beneath them. He came to be " the subtlest as- 
sertor of the Soul in Song," and like his own pair of 



BROWNING AS POET XV 

lovers on the Canipagna, ^^ unashamed of soul." His 
early preference of Shelley to Keats indicated this 
bent. His readers are conscious always of revela- 
tions of the souls of the men and women he portrays ; 
the sweet and tender womanhood of the Duchess, the 
sordid and material soul of the old Bishop of St. 
Praxed's, the devoted and heroic soul of Napoleon's 
young soldier, the weary and despairing soul of An- 
drea del Sarto, — and a host of others stand before us 
cleared of the veil of habit and convention. The 
souls of men appear as the victors over all material 
and immaterial obstacles. Human affection trans- 
forms the bare room to a bower of fruits and flowers ; 
human courage and resolution carry Childe Eoland 
victoriously past the threats and terrors of malignant 
nature, and the despair from accumulated memories 
of failure; death itself is described in Evelyn Hope, 
in Prospice, in Babbi Ben Ezra, as a phase, a transit 
of the soul, wherein the material aspects and the 
physical terrors disappear. In Browning's poetry, the 
one real and permanent thing is the world of ideas, 
the world of the spirit. He is in this one of the 
truest Platonists of modern times. 

To many young readers this method in art comes 
like a revelation. Other poets also portray the souls 
of men ; but Browning does it more obviously, more 
intentionally, more insistently. It is well, therefore, 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

to have read Browning. To learn to read him aright 
is to enter the gateway to other good and great poetry. 

Out of this predominating interest in the souls of 
men, and out of his intense intellectual activity and 
scientific curiosity, grows one of Browning's greatest 
defects. He is often led too far afield, into intricacies 
and anomalies of character beyond the range of com- 
mon experience and sympathy. The criminal, the 
" moral idiot,'^ belong to the alienist rather than to 
the poet. The abnormalities of nature have no place 
in the world of great art ; they do not echo the com- 
mon experience of mankind. Already the interest is 
decreasing in that part of his poetry which deals with 
such themes. Bishop Blougram and Mr. Sludge will 
not take place in the ranks of artistic creations. Nor 
can the poet's ^^ special pleading" for such types, how- 
ever ingenious it may be, whatever philanthropy of 
soul it may imply, be regarded as justification. Some- 
times, indeed, the poet is led by his sympathy and his 
intellectual ingenuity into defences that are incon- 
sistent with his own standards of the true and the 
beautiful. 

The trait in Browning which appeals to the largest 
number of readers is his strenuous optimism. He 
will admit no evil or sorrow too great to be borne, 
too irrational to have some ultimate purpose of benefi- 
cence. ^^ There shall never.be one lost good," says 



BROWNING AS POET xvii 

Abt Vogler. The suicides in the morgue only serve 
to call forth his declaration : — 

'' My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched ; 

TJC "Sic Tl? ^ ^ ^ 

That what began best can't end worst, 
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst." 

He has no fear of death; he will face it gladly, in 
confidence of the life beyond. His Grammarian is 
content to assume an order of things which will 
justify in the next life his ceaseless toil in this, 
merely to learn how to live. Eabbi Ben Ezra's old 
age is serene in the hope of the continuity of life and 
the eternal development of character ; he finds life 
good, and the plan of things perfect. In brief, Brown- 
ing accepts life as it is, and believes it good, piecing 
out his conception of the goodness of life by drawing 
without limit upon his hopes of the other M^orld. 
With the exception of a few poems like Andrea del 
Sarto, this is the unbroken tone of his poetry. Cal- 
vinism, asceticism, pessimism in any form, he rejects. 
He sustains his position not by argument, but by hope 
and assertion. It is a matter of temperament : he is 
optimistic because he was born so. Different from 
the serene optimism of Shakespeare's later life, in 
The Tempest and The Wi7iter^s Tale, in that it is not, 



XVlll INTRODUCTION 

like Shakespeare's, born of long and deep suffering 
from the contemplation of the tragedies of human life, 
it bears, in that degree, less of solace and conviction. 

To Browning's temperament, also, may be ascribed 
another prominent trait in his work. He steadily 
asserts the right of the individual to live out his own 
life, to be himself in fulfilling his desires and aspira- 
tions. The Statue and the Bust is the famous exposi- 
tion of this doctrine. It is a teaching that neither 
the poet's optimism nor his acumen has justified in 
the minds of men. It is a return to the unbridled 
freedom of nature advocated by Whitman and Rous- 
seau ; an extreme assertion of the value of the individ- 
ual man, and of unregulated democracy ; an outgrowth, 
it may be, of the robustness and originality of Brown- 
ing's nature, and interesting — not as a clew to his life, 
which conformed to that of organized society — but as 
a clew to his independence of classical and conven- 
tional forms in the exercise of his art. 

Creative energy Browning has in high degree. With 
the poet's insight into character and motives, the poet's 
grasp of the essential laws of human life, the poet's 
vividness of imagination, he has portrayed a host of 
types distinct from each other, true to life, strongly 
marked and consistent. With fine dramatic instinct 
he has shown these characters in true relation to the 
facts of life and to each other. In this respect he has 



BROWNING AS POET xix 

satisfied the most exigent demands of art, and has 
already taken rank as one of the great creative minds 
of the nineteenth century. 

True poet he is, also, in his depth of feeling and range 
of sympathy. Beneath a ruggedness of intellect, like 
his landscape in De Gitstihus, there is always sympathy 
and tenderness. It is, indeed, more like the serenity 
of Chaucer's emotions than like the tragic fervor of 
Shakespeare's. Mrs. Browning's estimate of him in 
Lady Geraldine^s Courtshixj, — 

''Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep 
down the middle, 
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity," 

is true criticism. 

His love of nature, and his sense of the joy and 
beauty of it, appear often in his poetry ; but not with 
the same insistence as in Wordsworth and Burns, and 
seldom with the same pervasiveness, or with the same 
beauty, as in Tennyson. He was rather the jjoet of 
men's souls. When he does use nature, it is generally 
to illustrate some phase or experience of the soul, and 
not for the sake of its beauty. He has, however, some 
nature-descriptions so exquisite that English poetry 
would be the poorer for their loss. Witness De Gusti- 
bus, Up at a Villa, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Pippa's 
Songs, and Saul. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

It is too early to guess at Browning's permanent 
place in our literature. But his vigor of intellect, his 
insight into the human heart, his originality in phrase 
and conception, his unquenchable and fearless optim- 
ism, and his grasp of the problems of his century, 
make him beyond question one of its greatest figures. 

APPRECIATIONS 

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's, 

Therefore, on him no speech ! and brief for thee, 

Browning ! Since Chaucer was alive and hale 

No man has walked along our roads with step 

So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 

So varied in discourse. But warmer climes 

Give brighter plumage, stronger wing : the breeze 

Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on 

Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where 

The Siren waits thee, singing song for song. 

— Walter Savage Landor. 

Tennyson has a vivid feeling of the dignity and potency of 
law. . . . Browning vividly feels the importance, the great- 
ness and beauty of passions and enthusiasms, and his imagi- 
nation is comparatively unimpressed by the presence of law 
and its operations. ... It is not the order and regularity 
in the processes of the natural world which chiefly delight 
Browning's imagination, but the streaming forth of power, 
and will, and love from the w^hole face of the visible uni- 
verse. . . . 

Tennyson considers the chief instruments of human 
progress to be a vast increase of knowledge and of political 



APPRECIATIONS xxi 

organization. Browning makes that progress dependent on 
the production of higher passions, and aspirations, — hopes, 
and joys, and sorrows; Tennyson finds the evidence of the 
truth of the doctrine of progress in the universal presence 
of a self-evolving law^ Browning obtains his assurance of 
its truth from inward presages and prophecies of the soul, 
from anticipations, types, and symbols of a higher greatness 
in store for man, which even now reside within him, a 
creature ever unsatisfied, ever yearning upward in thought, 
feeling, and endeavour. 

. . . Hence, it is not obedience, it is not submission to the 
law of duty, which points out to us our true path of life, but 
rather infinite desire and endless aspiration. Browning's 
ideal of manhood in this world always recognizes the fact 
that it is the ideal of a creature who never can be perfected 
on earth, a creature whom other and higher lives await in 
an endless hereafter. . . . 

The gleams of knowledge which we possess are of chief 
value because they ^' sting with hunger for full light." The 
goal of knowledge, as of love, is God himself. Its most 
precious part is that which is least positive — those momen- 
tary intuitions of things which eye hath not seen nor ear 
heard. The needs of the highest parts of our humanity can- 
not be supplied by ascertained truth, in which w^e niight 
rest, or which we might put to use for definite ends ; rather 
by ventures of faith, which test the courage of the soul, we 
ascend from surmise to assurance, and so again to higher 
surmise. — Condensed from Edward Dowden, Studies in 
Literature. 

. . . Browning has not cared for that poetic form which 



XXli INTRODUCTION 

bestows perennial charm, or else he was incapable of it. He 
fails in beauty, in concentration of interest, in economy of 
language, in selection of the best from the common treasure 
of experience. In those works where he has been most 
indifferent, as in the Red Cotton Night-Cap County^y, he has 
been merely whimsical and dull ; in those works where the 
genius he possessed is most felt, as in Saul, A Toccata of 
Galuppi's, Rahhi Ben Ezra, The Flight of the Duchess, The 
Bishop Orders his Tomb in Saint Praxed's Church, Herve 
Riel, Cavalier 2'unes, Time's Revenges, and many more, he 
achieves beauty, or nobility, or fitness of phrase such as only 
a poet is capable of. It is in these last pieces and their like 
that his fame lies for the future. It was his lot to be strong 
as the thinker, the moralist, with ''the accomplishment of 
verse," the scholar interested to rebuild the past of experi- 
ence, the teacher with an explicit dogma in an intellectual 
form with examples from life, the anatomist of human pas- 
sions, instincts, and impulses in all their gamut, the com- 
mentator on his own age ; he was weak as the artist, often 
unnecessarily and by choice, in the repulsive form, — in the 
awkward, the obscure, the ugly. He belongs wdth Jonson, 
with Dryden, with the heirs of the masculine intellect, 
the men of power not unvisited by grace, but in w^hom 
mind is predominant. Upon the work of such poets time 
hesitates, conscious of their mental greatness, but also of 
their imperfect art, their heterogeneous matter; at last 
the good is sifted from that whence worth has departed. 
— From George Edward Woodberry's Studies in Letters 
and Life. 

When it is urged that for a poet the intellectual energies 



APPRECIATIONS xxiii 

are too strong in Browning, that for poetry the play of 
intellectual interests and activities is too great in his work, 
and that Browning often and at times ruthlessly sacrifices 
the requirements and effects of art for the expression of 
thought, that '* though he refreshes the heart he tires the 
brain," we should admit this with regard to a good deal of 
the work of the third period. We should allow that this is 
the side to which he leans generally, but still hold that, 
though to many his intellectual quality and energy may 
well seem excessive, yet in great part of his work, and 
that of course, his best, the passion of the poet and his 
kind of imagination are just as fresh and powerful as 
the intellectual force and subtlety are keen and abundant. 
— James Frothingham, Studies of the Mind and Art of 
Robert Browning. 

Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak, 
And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier, 
/Our words are sobs, our cry or praise a tear : 
We are the smitten mortal, we the weak. 
We see a spirit on earth's loftiest peak 
Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear : 
See a great Tree of Life that never sere 
Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak ; 
Such ending is not death : such living shows 
What wide illumination brightness sheds 
From one big heart, — to conquer man's old foes : 
The coward, and the tyrant, and the force 
Of all those weedy monsters raising heads 
When Song is muck from springs of turbid source. 

— George Meredith. 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF BROWNING'S 
WORKS 



1833. Pauline. 


1843. Bells and PomegTan- 


1835. Paracelsus. 


ates, No. lY., The 


1837. Strafford (A tragedy). 


Return of the Dru- 


1840. Sordello. 


ses (A tragedy). 


184:1. Bells and Pomegran- 


1843. Bells and Pomegran- 


ates, 'No. I., Pippa 


ates, No. v., A Blot 


Passes. 


in the 'Scutcheon 


1842. Bells and Pomegran- 


(A tragedy). 


ates, No. XL, King 


1844. Bells and Pomegran- 


Victor and King 


ates, No. VL, Co- 


Charles. 


lombe's Birthday 


1842. Bells and Pomegran- 


(A play). 


ates, No. III., Dra- 


1845. Bells and Pomegran- 


matic Lyrics. 


ates, No. VII. 


Cavalier Tunes. 


" How they Brought the 


Italy and France. 


Good News from Ghent to 


Camp and Cloister. 


Aix." 


In a Gondola. 


Pictor Ignotus. 


Artemis Prologizes. 


The Italian in England. 


Waring. 


The Englishman in Italy. 


Queen Worship. 


The Lost Leader. 


Madhouse Cells. 


The Lost Mistress. 


Through the Metidja. 


Home Thoughts from 


The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 


Abroad. 



sxav 



LIST OF BROWNING'S WORKS 



XXV 



The Bishop Orders his 

Tomb. 
Garden Fancies. 
The Laboratory. 
The Confessional. 
The Flight of the Duchess. 
Earth's Immortalities. 
Song : " Nay, but you, who 

do not love her." 
The Boy and the iVngel. 
Night and Morning. 
Claret and Tokay. 
Saul. 

Time's Revenges. 
The Glove. 

1846. Bells and Pomegran- 
ates, No. yiii., 
Luria, and A SouFs 
Tragedy. 

1850. Christnrias Eve and 
Easterday. 

1852. Introductory Essay to 
Shelley's Letters. 

1855. Men and Women. 

Volume I. 

Love among the Ruins. 
A Lover's Quarrel. 
Evelyn Hope. 
Up at a Villa — Down in the 

City. 
A Woman's Last Word. 
Fra Lippo Lippi. 



A Toccata of Galuppi's. 

By the Fireside, 

Any Wife to Any Husband. 

iln Epistle (Karshish) . 

Mesmerism. 

A Serenade at the Villa. 

My Star. 

Instans Tyrannus. 

A Pretty Woman. 

*' Childe Roland to the Dark 
Tower Came." 

Respectability. 

A Light Woman. 

The Statue and the Bust. 

Love in a Life. 

Life in a Love. 

How it Strikes a Contempo- 
rary. 

The Last Ride Together. 

The Patriot. 

Master Hugues of Saxe- 
Gotha. 

Bishop Blougram's Apology, 

Memorabilia. 

Volume II. 

Andrea del Sarto. 

Before and After. 

In Three Days. 

Li a Year. 

Old Pictures in Florence. 

In a Balcony. 

Saul. 

''De Gustibus — ." 

Women and Roses. 



XXVI 



LIST OF BROWNING'S WORKS 



Protus. 

Holy-Cross Day. 

The Guardian Angel. 

Cleon. 

The Twins. 

Popularity. 

The Heretic's Tragedy. 

Two in the Campagna. 

A Grammarian's Funeral. 

One Way of Love. 

Another Way of Love. 

" Transcendentalism." 

Misconceptions. 

One Word More. 

1864. Dramatis Personse. 

James Lee. 

Gold Hair. 

The Worst of It. 

Dis Aliter Visum. 

Too Late. 

Abt Vogler. 

Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

A Death in the Desert. 

Caliban upon Setebos. 

Confessions. 

May and Death. 

Prospice. 

Youth and Art. 

A Face. 

A Likeness. 

Mr. Sludge, "The Medium.' 

Apparent Failure. 

Epilogue. 



1868-69. The Ring and the 
Book. 

1871. Balaustion's Adven- 
ture. 

1871. Prince Hohenstiel- 

Schwangau. 

1872. Fifine at the Fair. 

1873. Ked Cotton Night- 

Cap Country. 
1875. Aristophanes' Apol- 
ogy- 

1875. The Inn Album. 

1876. Pacchiarotto, and 

other Poems (in- 
cluding Natural 
Magic and Herve 
Riel). 

1877. The Agamemnon of 

iEschylus. 

1878. La Saisiaz, and The 

Two Poets of Croi- 
sic. 
1879-80. Dramatic Idyls. 

1883. Jocoseria. 

1884. Ferishtah's Fancies. 
1887. Parley! ngs with Cer- 
tain People. 

1890. Asolando. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 

The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (The Macmillan 

Company, ten vols.). 
Browning's Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition 

(Houghton, Mifflin & Co., one vol.). 
Selections from Browning (Crowell & Co., one vol.). 
Life of Browning, by William Sharp. 
Life of Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr. 
Introduction to Browning, by Hiram Corson. 
Guide Book to Browning, by George Willis Cook. 
Browning Cyclopaedia, by Edward Berdoe. 
Literary Studies, by W^alter Bagehot. 
Studies in Literature, by Edward Dowden. 
Studies in Letters and Life, by George Edward Woodberry. 
Boston Browning Society Papers. 
A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning, by Mrs. 

Sutherland Orr. 
Robert Browning : Personalia, by Edmund Gosse. 

xxvil 



xxviii BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Life of the Spirit in Modern English Poets, by Vida D. 

Scudder. 
Victorian Poetry, by Edmund Clarence Stedman. 
Studies of the Mind and Art of Robert Browning, by James 

Fotheringham. 
Browning Society Papers. 
Our Living Poets, by H. Buxton Forman. 
(An extensive bibliography, biographical and critical, is 

given in the Appendix to Sharp's Life of Browning; 

London, Walter Scott, 1890.) 



THE PIED PIPER OE HAMELIN 

A Child's Story 
( Written for, and inscribed to W. M. the Younger) 



HAMELiisr town's in Brunswick, 
By famous Hanover city ; 
The river Weser, deep and wide, 
Washes its walls on either side; 
A pleasanter spot you never spied ; 
But, when begins my ditty, 
Almost five hundred years ago, 
To see the townsfolk suffer so 
From vermin, was a pity. 

II 

Eats! 
They fought the dogs and killed the cats. 
And bit the babies in the cradles, 

B 1 



SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

And ate the cheeses out of the vats, 

And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, 

Split open the kegs of salted sprats, 

Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, 

And even spoiled the women's chats 

By drowning their speaking 

With shrieking and squeaking 

In fifty different sharps and flats. 2 



III 

At last the people in a body 

To the Town Hall came flocking : 

^' 'Tis clear," cried they, " our Mayor's a noddy ; 

And as for our Corporation, shocking 

To think we buy gowns lined with ermine 

For dolts that can't or won't determine 

What's best to rid us of our vermin ! 

You hope, because you're old and obese, 

To find in the furry civic robe ease ! 

Eouse up, sirs ! give your brains a racking 30 

To find the remedy we're lacking. 

Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing ! " 

At this the Mayor and Corporation 

Quaked with a. mighty consternation. 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 3 

IV 

An hour they sat in council ; 

At length the Mayor broke silence : 

^^For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell, 

I wish I were a mile hence ! 

It's easy to bid one rack one's brain — 

I'm sure my poor head aches again, 40 

I've scratched it so, and all in vain. 

Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap ! " 

Just as he said this, what should hap 

At the chamber door but a gentle tap ? 

'' Bless us," cried the Mayor, " what's that ? " 

(AVith the Corporation as he sat. 

Looking little, though wondrous fat ; 

Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister 

Than a too-long-opened oyster, 

Save when at noon his paunch grew^ mutinous 50 

For a plate of turtle, green and glutinous) 

^' Only a scraping of shoes on the mat ? 

Anything like the sound of a rat 

Makes my heart go pit-a-pat ! '^ 



SHORTER POEMS BY KOBEBT BROWNING 



" Come in ! " — the Mayor cried, looking bigger : 

And in did come the strangest figure ! 

His queer long coat from heel to head 

Was half of yellow and half of red, 

And he himself was tall and thin, 

With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60 

With light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, 

No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin. 

But lips where smiles went out and in ; 

There was no guessing his kith and kin : 

And nobody could enough admire 

The tall man and his quaint attire. 

Quoth one : ^^ It's as my great grandsire. 

Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone. 

Had walked his way from his painted tombstone ! '' 

VI 

He advanced to the council-table : 70 

And, '^ Please your honors,'' said he, ^^ I'm able, 
By means of a secret charm, to draw 
All creatures living beneath the sun. 
That creep or swim or fly or run, 
After me so as you never saw ! 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 5 

And I chiefly use my charm 

On creatures that do people harm, 

The mole and toad and newt and viper ; 

And people call me the Pied Piper.'^ 

(And here they noticed round his neck 80 

A scarf of red and yellow stripe, 

To match with his coat of self -same cheque : 

And at the scarf's end hung a pipe ; 

And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying. 

As if impatient to be playing 

Upon this pipe, as low it dangled 

Over his vesture so old-fangled.) 

^^ Yet," said he, '^ poor piper as I am. 

In Tartary I freed the Cham,'' 

Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats ; 90 

I eased in Asia the Nizam^ 

Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats : 

And as for what your brain bewilders. 

If I can rid your town of rats 

Will you give me a thousand guilders ? '' 

" One ? fifty thousand ! " — was the exclamation 

Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation. 



SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

VII 

Into the street the Piper stept, 

Smiling first a little smile, 

As if he knew what magic slept 

In his quiet pipe the while : 

Then, like a musical adept, 

To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, 

And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, 

Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled ; 

And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, 

You heard as if an army muttered: 

And the muttering grew to a grumbling ; 

And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; 

And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. 

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats. 

Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, 

Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, 

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins. 

Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, 

Families by tens and dozens, 
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives — 
Followed the Piper for their lives. 
From street to street he piped advancing, 
And step for step they followed dancing, 
Until they came to the river Weser, 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 7 

Wherein all plunged and perished ! 

— Save one, who, stout as Julius Caesar, 
Swam across and lived to carry 

(As he, the manuscript he cherished) 

To Eat-land home his commentary : 

Which was : ^^ At the first shrill notes of the pipe, 

I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, 

And putting apples, wondrous ripe, 

Into a cider press's gripe ; 13a 

And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, 

And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, 

And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks. 

And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks : 

And it seemed as if a voice 

(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery 

Is breathed) called out, ^Oh, rats, rejoice! 

The world is grown to one vast drysaltery ! 

So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, 

Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon ! ' 140 

And just. as a bulky sugar-puncheon, 

Already staved, like a great sun shone 

Glorious scarce an inch before me. 

Just as methought it said, ^ Come, bore me ! ' 

— I found the Weser rolling o'er me J' 



SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

yi 

You should have heard the Hamelin people 

Einging the bell§ till they rocked the steeple. 

" Go/' cried the Mayor, " and get long poles, 

Poke out the nests and block up the holes ! 

Consult with carpenters and builders, 150 

And leave in our town not even a trace 

Of the rats ! '^ — when suddenly, up the face 

Of the Piper perked in the market-place, 

With a, ^^ First, if you please, my thousand guilders ! '^ 

A thousand guilders ! The Mayor looked blue ; 

So did the Corporation, too. 

For council dinners made rare havoc 

With Claret,° Moselle,° Vin-de-Grave,° Hock°; 

And half the money would replenish 

Their cellar's biggest butt wdth Ehenish.° 160 

To pay this sum to a wandering fellow 

With a gypsy coat of red and yellow ! 

'' Beside,'' quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wdnk, 

" Our business was done at the river's brink ; 

We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, 

And what's dead can't come to life, I think. 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 9 

So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink 

From the duty of giving you something for drink, 

And a matter of money to put in your poke ; 

But as for the guilders, what we spoke 170 

Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. 

Beside, our losses have made us thrifty. 

A thousand guilders ! Come, take fifty ! " 



The Piper's face fell, and he cried, 

" No trifling ! I can't wait ! Beside, 

I've promised to visit by dinner-time 

Bagdat, and accept the prime 

Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, 

For having left, in the Caliph's° kitchen, 

Of a nest of scorpions no survivor : 180 

With him I proved no bargain-driver. 

With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver ! 

And folks who put me in a passion 

May find me pipe after another fashion." 

XI 

^^ How ? " cried the Mayor, '' d'ye think I brook 
Being worse treated than a cook ? 



10 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWJSING 

Insulted by a lazy ribald 

With idle pipe and vesture piebald ? 

You threaten us, fellow ? Do your worst ! 

Blow your pipe there till you burst ! '^ 190 



XII 

Once more he stept into the street, 

And to his lips again 
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane ; 

And ere he blew three notes (such sweet, 
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning 

Never gave the enraptured air) 
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling 
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling ; 
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering. 
Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering, 200 
And, like fowls in a farm-yard, when barley is scatter- 
ing, 
Out came the children running. 
All the little boys and girls, 
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls. 
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls. 
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after 
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter. 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 11 

XIII 
The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood 
As if they were changed into blocks of wood. 
Unable to move a step, or cry 210 

To the children merrily skipping by, 
— Could only follow with the eye 
That joyous crowd at the piper's back. 
But how the Mayor was on the rack, 
And the wretched Council's bosom beat. 
As the Piper turned from the High Street 
To where the Weser rolled its waters. 
Eight in the way of their sons and daughters ! 
However, he turned from South to West, 
And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, 220 
And after him the children pressed : 
Great was the joy in every breast. 
" He never can cross that mighty top ! 
He's forced to let the piping drop, 
And we shall see our children stop.'' 
When lo, as they reached the mountain- side, 
A wondrous portal opened wide. 
As if a cavern were suddenly hollowed ; 
And the Piper advanced, and the children followed, 
And when all were in, to the very last, 23a 

The door in the mountain-side shut fast. 



12 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Did I say all ? No ! One was lame, 

And could not dance the whole of the way ; 

And in after years, if you would blame 

His sadness, he was used to say, — 

" It's dull in our town since my playmates left ! 

I can't forget that I'm bereft 

Of all the pleasant sights they see. 

Which the Piper also promised me. 

For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, 240 

Joining the town, and just at hand. 

Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew. 

And flowers put forth a fairer hue. 

And everything was strange and new ; 

The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here. 

And their dogs outran our fallow deer, 

And honey-bees had lost their stings, 

And horses were born with eagles' wings; 

And just as I became assured 

My lame foot would be speedily cured, 250 

The music stopped and I stood still. 

And found myself outside the hill, 

Left alone against my will. 

To go now limping as before. 

And never hear of that country more ! '' 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 13 

XIV 

Alas, alas for Hamelin ! 

There came into many a burgher's pate 

A text which says that Heaven's gate 

Opes to the rich at as easy a rate 
As the needle's eye takes a camel in ! 26c 

The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South, 
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth. 

Wherever it was men's lot to find him, 
Silver and gold to his heart's content^ 
If he'd only return the way he went. 

And bring the children behind him. 
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor, 
And Piper and dancers were gone forever. 
They made a decree that lawyers never 

Should think their records dated duly 270 

If, after the day of the month and year. 
These words did not as well appear, 

" And so long after what happened here 

On the twenty-second of July, 
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six ; " 
And the better in memory to fix 
The place of the children's last retreat, 
They called it the Pied Piper's Street — 
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor 



14 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Was sure for the future to lose his labour. 280 

Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern 

To shock with mirth a street so solemn ; 
But opposite the place of the cavern 

They wrote the story on a column, 
And on the great church window painted 
The same, to make the world acquainted 
How their children were stolen away, 
And there it stands to this very day. 
And I must not omit to say 

That in Transylvania there's a tribe 290 

Of alien people who ascribe 
The outlandish ways and dress 
On which their neighbours lay such stress, 
To their fathers and mothers having risen 
Out of some subterraneous prison 
Into which they were trepanned 
Long time ago in a mighty band 
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, 
But how or why, they don't understand. 



XV 

So, Willy, let me and you be wipers 300 

Of scores out with all men — especially pipers ! 



TRAY 16 

And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice, 
If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise ! 



TEAY 



Sing me a hero ! Quench my thirst 
Of soul, ye bards ! 

Quoth Bard the first : 
'' Sir 01af,° the good knight, did don 
His helm, and eke his habergeon ..." 
Sir Olaf and his bard ! 

'' That sin-scathed brow " ° (quoth Bard the second), 

" That eye wide ope as tho' Fate beckoned 

My hero to some steep, beneath 

Which precipice smiled tempting Death . . . '' 

You too without your host have reckoned ! lo 

" A beggar-child " (let's hear this third ! ) 
" Sat on a quay's edge : like a bird 
Sang to herself at careless play, 
And fell into the stream. ' Dismay ! 
Help, you the standers-by ! ' . None stirred. 



16 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

" Bystanders reason, think of wives 

And children ere they risk their lives. 

Over the balustrade has bounced 

A mere instinctive dog, and pounced 

Plumb on the prize. ' How well he dives ! 20 

" ' Up he comes with the child, see, tight 
In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite 
A depth of ten feet — twelve, I bet ! 
Good dog ! What, off again ? There's yet 
Another child to save ? All right ! 

'{ ' How strange we saw no other fall ! 

It's instinct in the animal. 

Good dog ! But he's a long while under : 

If he got drowned I should not wonder — 

Strong current, that against the wall ! 30 

" ' Here he comes, holds in mouth this time 

— What may the thing be ? Well, that's prime ! 

Now, did you ever ? Reason reigns 

In man alone, since all Tray's pains 

Have fished — the child's doll from the slime ! ' 

" And so, amid the laughter gay, 
Trotted my hero off, — old Tray, — 
Till somebody, prerogatived 



INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 17 

With reason, reasoned : ' Why he dived, 

His brain would show us, I should say. 40 

'' ' John, go and catch — or, if needs be, 

Purchase that animal for me ! 

By vivisection, at expense 

Of half-an-hour and eighteen pence. 

How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see ! ^ '' 



INCIDENT OF THE EEENCH CAMP 

You know, we Erench stormed Ratisbon° : 

A mile or so away 
On a little mound, Napoleon 

Stood on our storming-day ; 
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how^ 

Legs wide, arms locked behind. 
As if to balance the prone brow 

Oppressive with its mind. 

Just as perhaps he mused " My plans 

That soar, to earth may fall, 
Let once my army-leader Lannes° 

Waver at yonder wall " — 



18 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew 

A rider, bound on bound 
Full-galloping ; nor bridle drew 

Until he reached the mound. 

Then off there flung in smiling joy, 

And held himself erect 
By just his horse's mane, a boy: 

You hardly could suspect" — 20 

(So tight he kept his lips compressed. 

Scarce any blood came through) 
You looked twice ere you saw his breast . 

Was all but shot in two. 

" Well," cried he, " Emperor, by God's grace 

We've got you Ratisbon ! 
The Marshal 's in the market-place, 

And you'll be there anon 
To see your flag-bird flap his vans 

Where I, to heart's desire, 30 

Perched him ! " The chiefs eye flashed ; his 
plans 

Soared up again like fire. 

The chief's eye flashed ; but presently .; 

Softened itself-,- as sheathes. 



FROM GHENT TO AIX 19 

A film the mother-eagle's eye 

When her bruised eaglet breathes. ^ 

" You're wounded ! '^ " Nay/' the soldier's pride 

Touched to the quick, he said : 
" I'm killed, Sire ! " And his chief beside, 

Smiling, the boy fell dead. 40 



"HOW THEY BEOUGHT THE GOOD NEWS 
FEOM GHENT TO AIX" 

[16-] 

I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he ; 

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three ; 

" Good speed ! " cried the watch, as the gate-bolts 

undrew ; 
" Speed ! " echoed the wall to us galloping through ; 
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, 
And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 

Not a word to each other ; we kept the great pace 
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our 

place ; 
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, 



20 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Then shortened each stirrup^ and set the pique right, lo 
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, 
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 

^Twas moonset at starting ; but while we drew near 
Lokeren,° the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear ; 
At Boom,° a great yellow star came out to see ; 
At Duffeld,° ^twas morning as plain as could be ; 
And from Mecheln° church-steeple we heard the half- 
chime, 
So, Joris broke silence with, " Yet there is time ! " 

At Aershot,^ up leaped of a sudden the sun. 

And against him the cattle stood black every one, 20 

To stare through the mist at us galloping past, 

And I saw my stout galloper Eoland at last. 

With resolute shoulders, each butting away 

The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray : 

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent 

back 
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track ; 
And one eye's black intelligence, — ever that glance 
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance ! . 
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon 
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. 30 



FROM GHENT TO AIX 21 

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned ; and cried Joris, " Stay- 
spur 1 
Your Eoos galloped bravely, the fault 's not in her, 
We'll remember at Aix '^ — for one heard the quick 

wheeze 
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering 

knees, 
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank. 
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. 

So, we were left galloping, Joris and T, 
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; 
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 
^l!^eath our feet broke the' brittle bright stubble like 
chaff ; 40 

Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white. 
And '^ Gallop,'' gasped Joris, '^ for Aix is in sight ! " 

"How they'll greet us!" — and all in a moment his 

roan 
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone ; 
And there was my Eoland to bear the whole weight 
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, 
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, 
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. 



22 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall, 
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, 50 
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear. 
Called my Eoland his pet-name, my horse without 

peer; 
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad 

or good. 
Till at length into Aix Eoland galloped and stood. 

And all I remember is, — friends flocking round 
As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground ; 
And no voice but was praising this Eoland of mine. 
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine. 
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) 
Was no more than his due who brought good news 
from Ghent. 60 



HEEVE EIEL 

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety 

two. 
Did the English fight the French, — woe to France! 
And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the 

blue. 



HERVE KIEL 23 

Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks 

pursue, 
Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the 

Rance,° 
With the English fleet in view. 

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in 
full chase ; 
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, 
Damf reville ; 
Close on him fled, great and small, 
Twenty-two good ships in all ; lo 

And they signalled to the place 
" Help the winners of a race ! 

Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick — 

or, quicker still. 
Here's the English can and will ! '^ 

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt 

on board ) 
" Why, what hope or chance have ships like these 

to pass ? " laughed they : 
" Eocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage 

scarred and scored, 



24 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Shall the ' Formidable ' here, with her twelve and 
eighty guns 
Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow 
way, 
Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty 
tons, 20 

And with flow at full beside ? 
Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide. 
Eeach the mooring ? Eather say, 
While rock stands or water runs, 
Not a ship will leave the bay ! " 

Then was called a council straight. 

Brief and bitter the debate : 

^^ Here's the English at our heels; would you have 

them take in tow 
All that's left us of the fleet, linked together, stern 

and bow. 
For a prize to Plymouth Sound ? 30 

Better run the ships aground ! '^ 

(Ended Damfreville his speech). 
Not a minute more to wait ! 
^^ Let the Captains all and each 
Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the 

beach! • • 

France must undergo her fate. 



HERV& RIEL 25 

" Give the word ! '' But no such word, 
Was ever spoke or heard ; 

For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all 
these 
— A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate — first, sec- 
ond, third ? 40 
No such man of mark, and meet 
With his betters to compete ! 

But a simple Breton sailor pressed^ by Tourville for 
the fleet, 
A poor coasting-pilot he, Herve Eiel the Croisickese.° 

And, " What mockery or malice have we here ? " cries 
Herve Eiel : 
'' Are you mad, you Malouins° ? Are you cowards, 
fools, or rogues ? 
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the 

soundings, tell 
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell 
'Twixt the ofhng here and Greve where the river 
disembogues ? 
Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the 
lying 's for ? 5.0, 

Morn and eve, night and day, 
Have I piloted your bay, 



26 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of 
Solidor. 
Burn the fleet and ruin France ? That were worse 
than fifty Hogues ! 
Sirs, they know I speak the truth ! Sirs, believe 
me there's a way ! 
Only let me lead the line, 
Have the biggest ship to steer, 
Get this ' Formidable ' clear. 
Make the others follow mine. 

And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know 
well, 60 

Eight to Solidor past Greve, 

And there lay them safe and sound ; 
And if one ship misbehave, 

— Keel so much as grate the ground, 
Why, I've nothing but my life, — here's my headl'^ 
cries Herve Eiel. 

ISTot a minute more to wait. 

" Steer us in then, small and great ! 

Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron ! " 
cried its chief. 
Captains, give the sailor place ! 

He is Admiral, in brief. 70 



HERVE KIEL 27 

Still the north-wind, by God's grace ! 

See the noble fellow's face 

As the big ship, with a bound, 

Clears the entry like a hound, 

Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide 

sea's profound ! 
See, safe thro' shoal and rock. 
How they follow in a flock, 
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the 

ground, 
Not a spar that comes to grief ! 
The peril, see, is past, 80 

All are harboured to the last. 
And just as Herve Eiel hollas " Anchor !^^ — sure as 

fate 
Up the English come, too late ! 

So, the storm subsides to calm : 

They see the green trees wave 

On the heights o'erlooking Greve. 
Hearts that bled are staunched with balm. 
" Just our rapture to enhance, 

Let the English rake the bay. 
Gnash their teeth and glare askance 90 

As they cannonade away ! 



28 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

'Keath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Eance ! " 
How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's counte- 
nance ! 
Out burst all with one accord, 
" This is Paradise for Hell ! 
Let France, let France's King 
Thank the man that did the thing ! " 
What a shout, and all one word, 

" Herve Eiel ! " 
As he stepped in front once more, loo 

Not a symptom of surprise 
In the frank blue Breton eyes. 
Just the same man as before. 

Then said Damfreville, '' My friend, 
I must speak out at the end, 

Tho' I find the speaking hard. 
Praise is deeper than the lips : 
You have saved the King his ships, 

You must name your own reward. 
'Faith our sun was n-ear eclipse ! no 

Demand whate'er you will, 
France remains your debtor still. 

Ask to heart's content and have ! or my name's not 
Damfreville." 



HERVE RIEL 29 

Then a beam of fun outbroke 
On the bearded mouth that spoke, 
As the honest heart laughed through 
Those frank eyes of Breton blue : 
" Since I needs must say my say, 

Since on board the duty's done, 

And from Malo Eoads to Croisic Point, what is it 
but a run ? — 120 

Since 'tis ask and have, I may — 
Since the others go ashore — 
Come ! A good whole holiday ! 

Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle 
Aurore ! " 
That he asked and that he got, — nothing more. 

Name and deed alike are lost : 
Not a pillar nor a post 

In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell ; 
Not a head in white and black 

On a single fishing smack, 130 

In memory of the man but for whom had gone to 
wrack 

All that France saved from the fight whence Eng- 
land bore the bell. 
G-o to Paris : rank on rank 



30 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Search the heroes flung pell-mell 
On the Loiivre,° face and flank ! 

You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve 
Eiel. 
So, for better and for worse, 
Herve Eiel, accept my verse ! 
In my verse, Herve Kiel, do thou once more 
Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the 
Belle Aurore ! 140 



PHEIDIPPIDES 

First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and 

rock ! 
Gods of my birthplace, daemons and heroes, honour to 

all! 
Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co-equal 

in praise 
— Ay, with Zeus° the Defender, with Her° of the aegis 

and spear ! 
Also, ye of the bow and the buskin,° praised be your 

peer, 



PHEIDIPPIDES 31 

Now, henceforth, and forever, — latest to whom I 

upraise 
Hand and heart and voice ! For Athens, leave pasture 

and flock ! 
Present to help, potent to save, Pan° — patron I call ! 

Archons° of Athens, topped by the tettix,° see, I 

return ! 
See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no spectre that 

speaks ! lo 

Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, 

Athens and you, 
"Eun, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for 

aid ! 
Persia has come,° we are here, where is She ? " Your 

command I obeyed, 
Ean and raced : like stubble, some field which a fire 

runs through. 
Was the space between city and city : two days, two 

nights did I burn 
Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up 

peaks. 

Into their midst I broke: breath served but for 
" Persia has come 1 



32 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Persia bids Athens proffer slaves'-tribute, water and 

earth° ; 
Razed to the ground is Eretria° — but Athens, shall 

Athens sink, 
Drop into dust and die — the flower of Hellas° utterly 

die, 20 

Die with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, 

the stander-by° ? 
Answer me quick, what help, what hand do you 

stretch o'er destruction's brink ? 
How, — when ? No care for my lingibs ! — there's 

lightning in all and some — 
Fresh and fit your message to bear, once lips give it 

birth ! " 

my Athens — Sparta love thee ? Did Sparta respond ? 

Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, mistrust. 

Malice, — each eye of her gave me its glitter of grati- 
fied hate ! 

Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for ex- 
cuses. I stood 

Quivering, — the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an 
inch from dry wood : 

" Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still they 
debate? 30 



PHEIDIPPIDES 33 

Thunder, thou Zeus ! Athene, are Spartans a quarry- 
beyond 

Swing of thy spear? Phoibos° and Artemis,° clang 
them ' Ye must ' ! ^' 



No bolt launched from 01umpos° ! Lo, their answer 

. at last ! 
"Has Persia come, — does Athens ask aid, — may 

Sparta befriend ? 
Nowise precipitate judgment — too weighty the issue 

at stake ! 
Count we no time lost time which lags thro' respect to 

the Gods ! 
Ponder that precept of old, ' No warfare^ whatever the 

odds 
In your favour, so long as the moon, half -orbed, is un- 
able to take 
Full-circle her state in the sky ! ' Already she rounds 

to it fast : 
Athens must wait, patient as we — who judgment 

suspend." 40 

Athens, — except for that sparkle, — thy name, I had 
mouldered to ash ! 



34 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

That sent a blaze thro' my blood ; off, off and away 

was I back, 
— Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the false 

and the vile ! 
Yet " Gods of my land ! '' I cried, as each hillock 

and plain. 
Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them 

again, 
" Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honours we 

paid you ere while ? 
Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome libation! 

Too rash 
Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so 

slack ! 

^^Oak and olive and bay, — I bid you cease to en- 
wreathe 

Brows made bold by your leaf ! Fade at the Persian's 
foot, 50 

You that, our patrons were pledged, should never 
adorn a slave ! 

Eather I hail thee, Parnes,° — trust to thy wild waste 
tract ! 

Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain ! What matter if 
slacked 



PHEIBIPPIDES 35 

My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to 

cave 
No deity deigns to drape with verdure ? — at least I 

can breathe, 
Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from- the 

mute ! " 

Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge ; 
Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a 

bar 
Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the 

way. 
Eight ! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure 

across : 60 

" Where I could enter, there I depart by ! jSTight in 

the fosse ? 
Athens to aid? Tho' the dive were thro' Erebos,° 

thus I obey — 
Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise ! 

No bridge 
Better!'' — when — ha! what was it I came on, of 

wonders that are ? 

There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he — majestical 
Pan! 



36 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Ivy drooped wanton^ kissed his head, moss cushioned 

his hoof ; 
All the great God was good in the eyes grave-kindly 

— the curl 
Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's awe 
As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs grand I 

saw. 
^^Halt, Pheidippides ! '' — halt I did, my brain of a 

whirl : yo 

^^ Hither to me! Why pale in my presence?'' he 

gracious began : 
" How is it, — Athens, only in Hellas, holds me aloof? 

"Athens, she only, rears me no fane, makes me no 

feast ! 
Wherefore? Than I what godship to Athens more 

helpful of old ? 
Ay, and still, and forever her friend ! Test Pan, trust 

me ! 
Go, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have 

faith 
In the temples and tombs ! Go, say to Athens, ' The 

Goat-God saith : 
When Persia — so much as strews not the soil — is 

cast in the sea, 



PHEIDIPPIBES 37 

Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your 

most and least, 
Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, made one cause with the 

free and the bold ! ' 80 

" Say Pan saith : ' Let this, foreshowing the place, be 

the pledge ! ' '' 
(Gay, the liberal hand held out this herbage I bear 
— Fennel, — I grasped it a-tremble with dew — what- 
ever it bode), 
" While, as for thee ..." But enough ! He was 

gone. If I ran hitherto — 
Be sure that the rest of my journey, I ran no longer, 

but flew. 
Parnes to Athens — earth no more, the air was my 

road ; 
Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more on 

the razor's edge ! 
Pan for Athens, Pan for me ! I too have a guerdon 

rare ! 



Then spoke Miltiades.° ^^And thee, best runner of 

Greece, 
Whose limbs did duty indeed, — what gift is promised 

thyself ? 90 



38 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Teil it us straightway, — Athens the mother demands 

of her son ! '^ 
Eosily blushed the youth : he paused : but, lifting at 

length 
His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered 

the rest of his strength 
Into the utterance — " Pan spoke thus : ' For what 

thou hast done 
Count on a worthy reward ! Henceforth be allowed 

thee release 
From the racer^s toil, no vulgar rew^ard in praise or in 

pelf!' 

'' I am bold to believe, Pan means reward the most to 

my mind ! 
Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this fennel 

may grow, — 
Pound — Pan helping us — Persia to dust, and, under 

the deep. 
Whelm her away forever ; and then, — no Athens to 

save, — 100 

Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the 

brave, — 
Hie to my house and home : and, when my children 

shall creep 



PHEIDIPPIDES 39 

Close to my knees, — recount how the God was awful 

yet kind, 
Promised their sire reward to the full — rewarding 

him — so ! ^^ 



Unforeseeing one ! Yes, he fought on the Marathon 

day: 
So, when Persia was dust, all cried " To Akropolis° ! 
Eun, Pheidippides, one race more ! the meed is thy 

due! 
' Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout ! '' He flung 

down his shield, 
Ean like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the 

rennel-field° 
And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire 

runs through, no 

Till in he broke: ^^Eejoice, we conquer!'' Like wine 

thro' clay, 
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died — the bliss ! 

So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of 
salute 

Is still ^^Eejoice!" — his word which brought rejoic- 
ing indeed. 



40 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

So is Pheidippides happy forever, — the noble strong 

man 
Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, 

whom a god loved so well, 
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was 

suffered to tell 
Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he 

began. 
So to end gloriously — once to shout, thereafter be 

mute : 
" Athens is saved ! '' — Pheidippides dies in the shout 

for his meed. 120 



MY STAE 

All that I know. 

Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw 

(Like the angled spar°) 
Now a dart of red, 

Now a dart of blue ; 
Till my friends have said 

They would fain see, too. 
My star that dartles the red and the blue ! 



EVELYN HOPE 41 

Then it stops like a bird ; like a flower, hangs furled : lo 
They must solace themselves with the Saturn° above it. 
What matter to me if their star is a world ? 
Mine has opened its soul to me ; therefore I love it. 



EVELYN HOPE 

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
That is her book-shelf, this her bed ; 

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, 
Beginning to die too, in the glass ; 

Little has yet been changed, I think : 
The shutters are shut, no light may pass 

Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink. 

Sixteen years old when she died ! 

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name ; 
It was not her time to love ; beside, 

Her life had many a hope and aim. 
Duties enough and little cares, 

And now was quiet, now astir. 
Till God's hand beckoned unawares, — 

And the sweet white brow is all of her. 



42 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope ? 

What, your soul was pure and true, 
The good stars met in your horoscope, 

Made you of spirit, fire and dew — 20 

And just because I was thrice as old 

And our paths in the world diverged so wdde, 
Each was naught to each, must I be told ? 

We were fellow mortals, naught beside ? 

No, indeed ! for God above 

Is great to grant, as mighty to make, 
And creates the love to reward the love : 

I claim yon still, for my own love's sake ! 
Delayed it may be for more lives yet. 

Thro' worlds I shall traverse, not a few : 30 

Much is to learn, much to forget 

Ere the time be come for taking you. 

But the time will come, at last it will, 

When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) 
In the lower earth in the years long still, 

That body and soul so pure and gay ? 
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine. 

And your mouth of your own geranium's red — 
And what would you do with me, in fine. 

In the new^ life come in the old one's stead. 40 



LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 43 

I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, 

Given up myself so many times, 
Gained me the gains of various men, 

Eansacked the ages, spoiled the climes ; 
Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, 

Either I missed or itself missed me : 
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope ! 

What is the issue ? let us see ! 

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while ! 

My heart seemed full as it could hold ; 50 

There was place and to spare for the frank young smile. 

And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold 
So hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep : 

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand ! 
There, that is our secret : go to sleep ! 

You will wake, and remember, and understand. 



LOVE AMOXG THE EUINS 

Wheke the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles 

Miles and miles 
On the solitary pastures where our sheep 

Half-asleep 



44 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop 

As they crop — 
Was the site once of a city great and gay, 

(So they say) 
Of our country's very capital, its prince 

Ages since lo 

Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far 

Peace or war. 

Now, — the country does not even boast a tree, 

As you see, 
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills 

Erom the hills 
Intersect and give a name to (else they run 

Into one). 
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires 

Up like fires 20 

O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall 

Bounding all. 
Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed, 

Twelve abreast. 

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass 

Kever was ! 
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads 

And embeds 



LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 45 

Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, 

Stock or stone ■ — 30 

Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe 

Long ago ; 
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame 

Struck them tame ; 
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold 

Bought and sold. 

Now, — the single little turret that remains 

On the plains. 
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd 

Overscored, 40 

While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks 

Thro' the chiuks — 
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time 

Sprang sublime. 
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced 

As they raced. 
And the monarch and his minions and his dames 

Viewed the games. 

And I know — while thus the quiet-coloured eve 

Smiles to leave 50 

To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece 
In such peace, 



46 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray 

Melt away — 
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair 

Waits me there 
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul 

For the goal, 
"When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, 
dumb 

Till I come. 60 

But he looked upon the city, every side, 

Far and wide. 
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades' 

Colonnades, 
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, — and then, 

All the men ! 
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, 

Either hand 
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace 

Of my face, 70 

Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech 

Each on each. 

In one year they sent a million fighters forth 
South and ISTorth, 



MISCONCEPTIONS AT 

And they built tlieir gods a brazen pillar high 

As the sky, 
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force — 

Gold, of course. 
Oh heart ! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns ! 

Earth's returns 80 

For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin ! 

Shut them in. 
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! 

Love is best. 



MISCONCEPTIONS 

This is a spray the bird clung to, 

Making it blossom with pleasure. 
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to, 

Eit for her nest and her treasure. 

Oh, what a hope beyond measure 
Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to, — 
So to be singled out, built in, and sung to ! 

This is a heart the Queen leant on, 

Thrilled in a minute erratic. 
Ere the true bosom she bent on, 10 



48 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Meet for love's regal dalmatic.° 

Oh, what a fancy ecstatic 
Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went on — 
Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on ! 



NATURAL MAGIC 

All I can say is — I saw it ! 
The room was as bare as your hand. 
I locked in the swarth little lady, — I swear. 
From the head to the foot of her — well, quite as bare ! 
^' No Nautch° shall cheat me," said I, '' taking my stand 
At this bolt which I draw ! " And this bolt — I with- 
draw it, 
And there laughs the lady, not bare, but embowered 
With — who knows what verdure, o'erf ruited, o'erflow- 

ered? 
Impossible ! Only — I saw it ! 

All I can sing is — I feel it ! lo 

This life was as blank as that room ; 
I let you pass in here. Precaution, indeed ? 
Walls, ceiling, and floor, — not a chance for a weed ! 
Wide opens the entrance : where's cold now, where's 
gloom ? 



APPARITIONS 49 

No May to sow seed liere^ no June to reveal it, 

Behold you enshrined in these blooms of your bring- 
ing, 

These fruits of your bearing — nay, birds of your 
winging 1 

A fairy-tale ! Only — I feel it ! 



APPAETTIONS 

{Prologue to ** The Two Poets of Croisic.'') 

Such a starved band of moss 
Till^ that May-morn, 

Blue ran the flash across : 
Violets were born ! 

Sky — what a scowl of cloud 

Till, near and far, 
Kay on ray split the shroud : 

Splendid, a star ! 

World — how it walled about 

Life with disgrace, 
Till God's own smile came out: 

That was thy face ! 



50 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

A WALL 

THE old wall here ! How I could pass 
Life in a long midsummer day. 

My feet confined to a plot, of grass, 
My eyes from a wall not once away ! 

And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe 
Yon wall I watch, with a wreath of green : 

Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loath, 
In lappets of tangle they laugh between. 

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe ? 

Why tremble the sprays ? What life o'erbrims lo 
The body, — the house no eye can probe, — 

Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs ? 

And there again ! But my heart may guess 
Wlio tripped behind; and she sang, perhaps : 

So the old wall throbbed, and it's life's excess 
Died out and away in the leafy wraps. 

Wall upon wall are between us: life 

And song should away from heart to heart ! 

1 — prison-bird, with a ruddy strife 

At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start — 20 



CaJSTFESSIOHS 51 

Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing 

That's spirit : tho' cloistered fast, soar free ; 

Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring 

Of the rueful neighbours, and — forth to thee ! 



CONFESSIONS 

What is he buzzing in my ears ? 

'' Now that I come to die. 
Do I view the world as a vale of tears ? '' 

Ah, reverend sir, not I ! 

What I viewed there once, w^hat I view again 

Where the physic bottles stand 
On the table's edge, — is a suburb lane. 

With a wall to my bedside hand. 

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do. 

From a house you could descry 
O'er the garden-wall : is the curtain blue 

Or green to a healthy eye ? 

To mine, it serves for the old June weather 
Blue above lane and wall ; 



52 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

And that farthest bottle labelled " Ether " 
Is the house o'er-topping all. 

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper, 

There watched for me, one June, 
A girl : I know, sir, it's improper, 

My poor mind's out of tune. 20 

Only, there was a way . . . you crept 

Close by the side, to dodge 
Eyes in the house, two eyes except : 

They styled their house " The Lodge." 

What right had a lounger up their lane ? 

But, by creeping very close, 
With the good wall's help, — their eyes might strain 

And stretch themselves to Oes, 

Yet never catch her and me together, 

As she left the attic, there, 30 

By the rim of the bottle labelled ^^ Ether," 

And stole from stair to stair 

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, 

We loved, sir — used to meet: 
How sad and bad and mad it was — 

But then, how it was sweet ! 



A WOMAN'S LAST WORD 63 

A WOMAN'S LAST WOED 

Let's contend no more, Love, 

Strive nor weep : 
All be as before, Love, 

— Only sleep ! 

What so wild as words are ? 

I and thou 
In debate, as birds are, 

Hawk on bough ! 

See the creature stalking 

While we speak ! lo 

Hush and hide the talking. 

Cheek on cheek. 

What so false as truth is, 

False to thee ? 
Where the serpent's tooth is, 

Shun the tree — 

Where the apple reddens, 

Never pry — 
Lest we lose our Edens, 

Eve and I. 20 



54 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Be a god and hold me 

With a charm ! 
Be a man and fold me 

With thine arm ! 

Teach me, only teach, Love ! 

As I ought 
I will speak thy speech, Love, 

Think thy thought — 

Meet, if thou require it, 

Both demands, 30 

Laying flesh and spirit 

In thy hands. 

That shall be to-morrow, 

Not to-night : 
I must bury sorrow 

Out of sight : 

— Must a little weep. Love, 

(Foolish me !) 
And so fall asleep. Love, 

Loved by thee. > 40 



A PRETTY WOMAN 55 



A PEETTY WOMA]Sr 

That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers, 

And the blue eye 

Dear and dewy, 
And that infantine fresh air of hers ! 

To think men cannot take you, Sweet, 

And infold you, 

Ay, and hold you. 
And so keep you what they make you. Sweet ! 

You like us for a glance, you know — 

For a word's sake lo 

Or a sword's sake : 

All's the same, whatever the chance, you know. 

And in turn we make you ours, we say — 

You and youth too. 

Eyes and mouth too. 
All the face composed of flowers, we say. 

All's our own, to make the most of, Sweet — 

Sing and say for. 

Watch and pray for. 
Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet ! 20 



66 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet, 

Tho' we prayed you. 

Paid you, brayed you 
In a mortar — for you could not, Sweet ! 

So, we leave the sweet face fondly there, 

Be its beauty 

Its sole duty ! 
Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there ! 

And while the face lies quiet there, 

Who shall wonder 30 

That I ponder 

A conclusion ? I will try it there. 

As, — why must one, for the love foregone 

Scout mere liking ? 

Thunder-striking 
Earth, — the heaven, we looked above for, gone ! 

Why, with beauty, needs there money be, 

Love with liking ? 

Crush the fly-king 
In his gauze, because no honey-bee ? 40 



A PRETTY WOMAN 67 

May not liking be so simple-sweet, 

If love grew there 

'Twould undo there 
All that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet ? 

Is the creature too imperfect, say ? 

Would you mend it 

And so end it ? 
Since not all addition perfects aye ! 

Or is it of its kind, perhaps, 

Just perfection — 50 

Whence, rejection 
Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps ? 

Shall we burn up, tread that face at once 

Into tinder, 

And so hinder 
Sparks from kindling all the place at once ? 

Or else kiss away one's soul on her ? 

Your love-fancies ! 

— A sick man sees 
Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her ! 60 



58 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose, — 

Plucks a mould-flower 

For his gold flower, 
Uses fine things that efface the rose. 

Rosy rubies make its cup more rose, 

Precious metals 

Ape the petals, — 
Last, some old king locks it up, morose ! 

Then how grace a rose ? I know a way ! 

Leave it, rather. 70 

Must you gather ? 
Smell, kiss, wear it — at last, throw away. 



YOUTH AND AET 

It once might have been, once only : 

We lodged in a street together. 
You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely, 

I, a lone she-bird of his feather. 

Your trade was with sticks and clay. 

You thumbed, thrust, patted, and polished, 

Then laughed " They will see some day. 
Smith made, and Gibson° demolished.^^ 



YOUTH AND ART ^9 

My business was song, song, song ; 

I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered, lo 
" Kate Brown's on the boards ere long. 

And Grisi's° existence embittered I " 

I earned no more by a warble 

Than you by a sketch in plaster ; 
You wanted a piece of marble, 

I needed a music-master. 

We studied hard in our styles. 

Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos," 

For air, looked out on the tiles, 

For fun, watched each other's windows. 20 

You lounged, like a boy of the South, 
Cap and blouse — nay, a bit of beard too; 

Or you got it, rubbing your mouth 
With fingers the clay adhered to. 

And I — soon managed to find 

Weak points in the flower-fence facing, 

Was forced to put up a blind 
And be safe in my corset-lacing. 

No harm ! It was not my fault 

If you never turned your eye's tail up 30 



60 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

As I shook upon E in alt. 

Or ran the chromatic scale up : 

For spring bade the sparrows pair, 
And the boys and girls gave guesses. 

And stalls in our street looked rare 
With bulrush and watercresses. 

Why did not you pinch a flower 

In a pellet of clay and fling it ? 
Why did not I put a power 

Of thanks in a look, or sing it ? 40 

I did look, sharp as a lynx, 

(And yet the memory rankles) 
When models arrived, some minx 

Tripped up stairs, she and her ankles. 

But I think I gave you as good ! 

" That foreign fellow, — who can know 
How she pays, in a playful mood, 

Eor his tuning her that piano ? " 

Could you say so, and never say 

" Suppose we join hands and fortunes, 50 

And I fetch her from over the way, 

Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes ?'^ 



A TALE 61 

No, no : you would not be rash, 
JSTor I rasher and something over; 

You've to settle yet Gibson's hash, 
And Grisi yet lives in clover. 

But you meet the Prince at the Board, 

I'm queen myself at hols-pares^ 
I've married a rich old lord. 

And you're dubbed knight and an K/.A. 60 

Each life unfulfilled, you see ; 

It hangs still, patchy and scrappy : 
We have not sighed deep, laughed free. 

Starved, feasted, despaired, — been happy. 

And nobody calls you a dunce. 

And people suppose me clever ; 
This could but have happened once, 

And we missed it, lost it forever. 



A TALE 

{Epilogue to " The Two Poets of Croisic") 

What a pretty tale you told me 
Once upon a time 



62 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

— Said you found it somewhere (scold me !) 
Was it prose or was it rhyme, 

Greek or Latin ? Greek, you said, 
While your shoulder propped my head. 

Anyhow there's no forgetting 

This much if no more, 
That a poet (pray, no petting !) 

Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore, 
Went where suchlike used to go, 
Singing for a prize, you know. 

Well, he had to sing, nor merely 

Sing but play the lyre ; 
Playing was important clearly 

Quite as singing : I desire, 
Sir^ you keep the fact in mind 
For a purpose that's behind. 

There stood he, while deep attention 
Held the judges round, 

— Judges able, I should mention. 
To detect the slightest sound 

Sung or played amiss : such ears 
Had old judges, it appears ! 



A TALE 63 

None the less he sang out boldly, 

Played in time and tune, 
Till the judges, weighing coldly 

Each note's worth, seemed, late or soon, 
Sure to smile '^ In vain one tries 
Picking faults out : take the prize ! ^' 30 

When, a mischief ! Were they seven 

Strings the lyre possessed ? 
Oh, and afterwards eleven. 

Thank you ! Well, sir, — who had guessed 
Such ill luck in store ? — it happed 
One of those same seven strings snapped. 

All was lost, then ! No ! a cricket 

(What ^^ cicada''? Pooh!) 
— Some mad thing that left its thicket 

For mere love of music — flew 40 

With its little heart on lire. 
Lighted on the crippled lyre. 

So that when (Ah joy !) our singer 

For his truant string 
Feels with disconcerted finger. 

What does cricket else but fling 



64 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Fiery heart forth, sound the note 
Wanted by the throbbing throat ? 

Ay and, ever to the ending, 

Cricket chirps at need, 50 

Executes the hand's intending. 

Promptly, perfectly, — indeed 
Saves the singer from defeat 
With her chirrup low and sweet. 

Till, at ending, all the judges 

Cry with one assent 
'' Take the prize — a prize who grudges 

Such a voice and instrument ? 
Why, we took your lyre for harp. 
So it shrilled us forth F sharp ! '' 60 

Did the conqueror spurn the creature 

Once its service done ? 
That's no such uncommon feature 

In the case when Music's son 
Finds his Lotte's° power too spent 
For aiding soul development. 

No ! This other, on returning 
Homeward, prize in hand, 



A TALE 65 

Satisfied his bosom's yearning : 

(Sir, I hope you understand !) 70 

— Said ^^ Some record there must be 
Of this cricket's help to me ! " 

So, he made himself a statue : 

Marble stood, life size ; 
On the lyre, he pointed at you, 

Perched his partner in the prize ; 
Never more apart you found 
Her, he throned, from him, she crowned. 

That's the tale : its application ? 

Somebody I know 80 

Hopes one day for reputation 

Thro' his poetry that's — Oh, 
All so learned and so wise 
And deserving of a prize ! 

If he gains one, will some ticket, 

When his statue's built. 
Tell the gazer ^^ 'Twas a cricket 

Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt 
Sweet and low, when strength usurped 
Softness' place i' the scale, she chirped ? 90 



66 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

" For as victory was nighest, 
While I sang and played, — 

With my lyre at lowest, highest, 
Eight alike, — one string that made 

' Love ' sound soft was snapt in twain 

Never to be heard again, — 

'' Had not a kind cricket fluttered. 

Perched upon the place 
Vacant left, and duly uttered 

' Love, Love, Love,' whene'er the bass 
Asked the treble to atone 
For its somewhat sombre drone." 

But you don't know music ! Wherefore 

Keep on casting pearls 
To a — -poet? All I care for 

Is — to tell him that a girl's 
" Love " comes aptly in when gruff 
Grows his singing. (There, enough !) 



SONGS FROM PIPPA PASSES 67 



SONGS FROM PIPPA PASSES 

Day! 

Faster and more fast, 
O'er night's brim, day hails at last : 
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim - 
Where spurting and suppressed it lay. 
For not a froth-flake touched the rim 
Of yonder gap in the solid gray 
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away ; 
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled. 
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, lo 

Eose, reddened, and its seething breast 
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the 
world. 



All service ranks the same with God: 

If now, as formerly He trod 

Paradise, His presence fills 

Our earth, each only as God wills 

Can work — God's puppets, best and worst, 

Are we : there is no last nor firste 



68 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

The yearns at the spring 
And day's at the morn : 
Morning's at seven ; 
The hillside's dew-pearled ; 
The lark's on the wing ; 
The snail's on the thorn : 
God's in His heaven — 
All's right with the world ! 



Give her but a least excuse to love me ! 

When — where — 
How — can this arm establish her above me, 

If fortune fixed her as my lady there, 30 

There already, to eternally reprove me? 

(" Hist ! " — said Kate the queen ; 
But '' Oh," cried the maiden, binding her tresses, 

"'Tis only a page that carols unseen, 
Crumbling your hounds their messes ! ") 

Is she wronged ? — To the rescue of her honour, 

My heart ! 
Is she poor ? — What costs it to be styled a donor ? 

Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part. 



THE LOST LEADER 69 

Bnt that fortune should have thrust all this upon her ! 

(" Nay, list ! " — bade Kate the queen ; 41 

And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses, 

" 'Tis only a page that carols unseen, 
Fitting your hawks-their jesses ! '') 



THE LOST LEADEE 

Just for a handful of silver he left us. 

Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, 

Lost all the others she lets us devote ; 
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, 

So much was theirs who so little allowed ; 
How all our copper had gone for his service ! 

Eags — were they purple, his heart had been proud! 
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him. 

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 10 

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our pattern to live and to die ! 
Shakespeare'' was of us, Milton*^ was for us, 

Burns,° Shelley, ° were with us, — they watch from 
their graves ! 



70 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves ! 

We shall march prospering — not through his presence; 

Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre; 
Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his quiescence, 

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire : 20 
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, 

One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, 
One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels. 

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God ! 
Life's night begins : let him never come back to us ! 

There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain. 
Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twilight, 

Never glad confident morning again ! 
Best fight on well, for we taught him — strike gal- 
lantly. 

Menace our heart ere we master his own ; 30 

Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us. 

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne ! 



APPARENT FAILURE 71 



APPARENT FAILURE 

** We shall soon lose a celebrated building." 

— Paris Newspaper. 

No, for I'll save it ! Seven years since 
I passed through Paris, stopped a day 

To see the baptism of your Prince,° 
Saw, made my bow, and went my way : 

Walking the heat and headache off, 
I took the Seine-side, you surmise, 

Thought of the Congress,'' Gortschakoff,° 
Cavour's° appeal and BuoPs° replies, 
So sauntered till — what met my eyes ? 

Only the Doric little Morgue ! la 

The dead-house where you show your drowned : 

Petrarch's Vaucluse° makes proud the Sorgue,° 
Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned. 

One pays one's debt"" in such a case ; 

I plucked up heart and entered, — stalked. 

Keeping a tolerable face 

Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked: 
Let them ! ]S[o Briton's to be balked ! 



72 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

First came the silent gazers ; next, 

A screen of glass, we're thankful for ; 20 

Last, the sight's self, the sermon's text, 

The three men who did most abhor 
Their life in Paris yesterday. 

So killed themselves : and now, enthroned 
Each oa his copper couch, they lay 

Fronting me, waiting to be owned. 

T thought, and think, their sin's atoned. 

Poor men, God made, and all for that ! 

The reverence struck me ; o'er each head 
Eeligiously was hung its hat, 30 

Each coat dripped by the owner's bed, 
Sacred from touch : each had his berth, 

His bounds, his proper place of rest, 
Who last night tenanted on earth 

Some arch, where twelve such slept abreast, — 

Unless the plain asphalt seemed best. 

How did it happen, my poor boy ? 

You wanted to be Buonaparte 
And have the Tuileries° for toy. 

And could not, so it broke your heart ? 40 



APPARENT FAILUBE 73 

You, old one by his side, I judge, 

Were, red as blood, a socialist, 
A leveller ! Does the Empire grudge 

YouVe gained what no Eepublic missed ? 

Be quiet, and unclench your fist ! 

And this — why, he was red in vain, 

Or black, — poor fellow that is blue° ! 
What fancy was it, turned your brain ? 

Oh, women Avere the prize for you ! 
Money gets women, cards and dice 50 

Get money, and ill-luck gets just 
The copper couch and one clear nice 

Cool squirt of water o'er your bust, 

The right thing to extinguish lust ! 

It's wiser being good than bad ; 

It's safer being meek than fierce : 
It's fitter being sane than mad. 

My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched ; 

That, after Last, returns the First, 60 

Tho' a wide compass round be fetched ; 

That what began best, can't end worst, 

Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst. 



74 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 



FEAES AND SCEUPLES 

Here's my case. Of old I used to love him, 
This same unseen friend, before I knew : 

Dream there was none like him, none above him, — 
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true. 

Loved I not his letters^ full of beauty ? 

Not his actions famous far and wide ? 
Absent, he would know I vowed him duty, 

Present, he would find me at his side. 

Pleasant fancy ! for I had but letters. 

Only knew of actions by hearsay : lo 

He himself was busied with my betters ; 

What of that ? My turn must come some day. 

^^Some day '^ proving —no day ! Here's the puzzle. 

Passed and passed my turn is. W^hy complain ? 
He's so busied ! If I could but muzzle 

People's foolish mouths that give me pain ! 

" Letters ? '' (hear them !) " You a judge of writing ? 

Ask the experts ! — How they shake the head 
O'er these characters, your friend's inditing — 

Call them forgery from A to Z° ! 20 



FEARS AND SCRUPLES 75 

"Actions ? Where's your certain proof (they bother) 
" He, of all you find so great and good, 

He, he only, claims this, that, the other 
Action -— claimed by men, a multitude ? '^ 

I can simply wish I might refute you. 

Wish my friend would, — by a word, a wink, — 

Bid me stop that foolish mouth, — you brute you ! 
He keeps absent, — why, I cannot think. 

ISTever mind ! Tho' foolishness may flout me. 

One thing's sure enough ; 'tis neither frost, 30 

Ko, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me 

Thanks for truth — tho' falsehood, gained — tho' lost. 

All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier, 

For that dream's sake ! How forget the thrill 

Thro' and thro' me as I thought, ^^The gladlier 
Lives my friend because I love him still ! " 

Ah, but there's a menace some one utters ! 

" What and if your friend at home play tricks ? 
Peep at hide-and-seek behind the shutters ? 

Mean your eyes should pierce thro' solid bricks ? 40 

" What and if he, frowning, wake you, dreamy ? 
Lay on you the blame that bricks — conceal ? 



76 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Say 'At least I saw who did not see me, 
Does see now, and presently shall feel ' 9 " 

'' Why, that makes your friend a monster ! " say you : 
" Had his house no window ? At first nod, 

Would you not have hailed him ? '' Hush, I pray you ! 
What if this friend happen to be — God ? 



mSTANS TYRANKUS 

Of the million or two, more or less, 
I rule and possess. 
One man, for some cause undefined, 
Was least to my mind. 

I struck him, he grovelled of course — 

Por, what was his force ? 

I pinned him to earth with my weight 

And persistence of hate ; 

And he lay, would not moan, would not curse. 

As his lot might be worse. lo 

"Were the object less mean, would he stand 
At the swing of my hand ! 



INSTANS TYBANj^US 77 

For obscurity helps him^ and blots 

The hole where he squats.'^ 

So^ I set my five wits on the stretch 

To inveigle the wretch. 

All in vain ! Gold and jewels I threw. 

Still he couched there perdue ; 

I tempted his blood and his flesh, 

Hid in roses my mesh, 20 

Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth : 

Still he kept to his filth. 

Had he kith now or kin, were access 

To his heart, did I press : 

Just a son or a mother to seize ! 

No such booty as these. 

Were it simply a friend to pursue 

'Mid my million or two. 

Who could pay me, in person or pelf. 

What he owes me himself ! 30 

No : I could not but smile thro' my chafe : 

For the fellow lay safe 

As his mates do, the midge and the nit, 

— Thro' minuteness, to wit. 

Then a humour more great took its place 
At the thought of his face : 



78 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

The droop, the low cares of the mouth, 

The trouble uncouth 

'Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain 

To put out of its pain. 40 

And, " no ! '^ I admonished myself, 

" Is one mocked by an elf, 

Is one baffled by toad or by rat ? 

The gravamen's^ in that ! 

How the lion, who crouches to suit 

His back to my foot. 

Would admire that I stand in debate ! 

But the small turns the great 

If it vexes you, — that is the thing ! 

Toad or rat vex the king ? 50 

Tho' I waste half my realm to unearth 

Toad or rat, 'tis well worth ! " 

So, I soberly laid my last plan 

To extinguish the man. 

Eound his creep-hole, with never a break 

Ean my fires for his sake ; 

Overhead, did my thunder combine 

With my under-ground mine : 

Till I looked from my labour content 

To enjoy the event. 60 



THE PATRIOT 79 

When sudden . . . how think ye, the end ? 

Did I say " without friend ? '^ 

Say ratlier, from marge to blue marge 

The whole sky grew his targe 

With the sun's self for visible boss. 

While an Arm ran across 

Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast ! 

Where the wretch was safe prest ! 

Do you see ! Just my vengeance complete, 

The man sprang to his feet, 70 

Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed ! 

— So, / was afraid ! 



THE PATEIOT 
Ak Old Story 

It was roses, roses, all the way, 

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad ; 
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, 

The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, 
A year ago on this very day. 

The air broke into a mist with bells, 

The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. 



80 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Had I said, " Good folk, mere noise repels — 
But give me your sun from yonder skies ! ^' 
They had answered " And afterward, what else ? '' 

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun 
To giye it my loving friends to keep ! 

Naught man could do, have I left undone : 
And you see my harvest, what I reap 

This very day, now a year is run. 

There's nobody on the house-tops now — 
Just a palsied few at the windows set ; 

For the best of the sight is, all allow, 
At the Shambles' Gate — or, better yet, 

By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. 

I go in the rain, and, more than needs, 
A rope cuts both my wrists behind ; 

And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds. 
For they fling, whoever has a mind. 

Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. 

Thus I entered, and thus I go ! 

In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. 
^^ Paid by the world, what dost thou owe 

Me ? " — God might question ; now instead, 
'Tis God shall repay : I am safer so. 



THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 81 

THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 

MoKNiNG, evening, noon, and niglit, 
^' Praise God ! '' sang Theocrite. 

Then to liis poor trade he turned, 
Whereby the daily meal was earned. 

Hard he laboured, long and well ; 
O'er his work the boy's curls fell. 

But ever, at each period. 

He stopped and sang, ^' Praise God ! " 

Then back again his curls he threw, 

And cheerful turned to work anew. lo 

Said Blaise, the listening monk, ^^ Well done; 
I doubt not thou art heard, my son : 

'' As well as if thy voice to-day 

Were praising God, the Pope's great way. 

" This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome 
Praises God from Peter's dome." 



82 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Said Theocrite, " Would God that I 

Might praise Him that great way, and die ! '^ 

Night passed, day shone. 

And Theocrite was gone. 20 

With God a day endures alway, 
A thousand years are but a day. 

God said in heaven, ^^Nor day nor night 
Now brings the voice of my delight.'' ° 

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth. 
Spread his wings and sank to earth ; 

Entered, in flesh, the empty cell. 

Lived there, and played the craftsman well ; 

And morning, evening, noon, and night, 

Praised God in x^lace of Theocrite. 30 

And from a boy, to youth he grew : 
The man put off the stripling's hue : 

The man matured and fell away 
Into the season of decay : 



THE BOY AND THE ANOEL 83 

And ever o'er tlie trade he bent, 
And ever lived on earth content. 

(He did God's will ; to him, all one 
If on the earth or in the sun.) 

God said, " A praise is in mine ear ; 

There is no doubt in it, no fear : 40 

" So sing old worlds, and so 

jSTew worlds that from my footstool go. 

" Clearer loves sound other ways : 
I miss my little human praise." 

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell 
The flesh disguise, remained the cell. 

'Twas Easter day :^ he flew to Eome, 
And paused above Saint Peter's dome. 

In the tiring-room close by 

The great outer gallery, 50 

With his holy vestments dight, 
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite ; 



84 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

And all his past career 
Came back upon him clear, 

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, 
Till on his life the sickness weighed ; 

And in his cell, when death drew near, 
An angel in a dream brought cheer : 

And rising from the sickness drear. 

He grew a priest, and now stood here. 60 

To the East with praise he turned. 
And on his sight the angel burned. 

" I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell, 
And set thee here ; I did not well. 

^' Vainly I left my angel-sphere. 
Vain was thy dream of many a year. 

" Thy voice's praise seemed weak ; it dropped — 
Creation's chorus stopped ! 

" Go back and praise again 

The early way, while I remain. 70 



MEMORABILIA 86 

^' With that weak voice of our disdain, 
Take up creation's pausing strain. 

" Back to the cell and poor employ : 
Eesume the craftsman and the boy ! '^ 

Theocrite grew old at home ; 

A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome. 

One vanished as the other died : 
They sought God side by side. 



MEMORABILIA 

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, 
And did he stop and speak to you, 

And did you speak to him again? 
How strange it seems and new ! 

But you were living before that, 
And also you are living after; 
And the memory I started at — 
My starting moves your laughter ! 



86 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

I crossed a moor with a name of its own 

And a certain use in the world, no doubt, lo 

Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 
^Mid the blank miles round about. 



For there I picked upon the heather 
And there I put inside my breast 

A moulted feather, an eagle-feather! 
Well, I forget the rest. 



WHY I AM A LIBEEAL 

" Why ? '^ Because all I haply can and do. 
All that I am now, all I hope to be, — 
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free 

Body and soul the purpose to pursue, 

God traced for both ? If fetters, not a few, 
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me. 
These shall I bid men — each in his degree 

Also God-guided — bear, and gayly too ? 



PROSPICE 87 

But little do or can the best of us : 
That little is achieved thro' Liberty. lo 

Who then dares hold, emancipated thus, 
His fellow shall continue bound ? not I, 

Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss 
A brother's right to freedom. That is " Why.'' 



PEOSPICE 



Fear death ? to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place. 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe ; 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form. 

Yet the strong man must go : 
For the journey is done and the summit attained. 

And the barriers fall, lo 

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained. 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last! 



88 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and for- 
bore, 

And bade me creep past. 
No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 

The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness, and cold. 20 

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 

The black minute's at end, 
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 

And with God be the rest ! 



EPILOGUE TO ^^ASOLANDO'' 

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, 

When you set your fancies free. 
Will they pass to where — by death, fools think, im- 
prisoned — 
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, 
— Pity me? 



EPILOGUE TO "ASOLANDO'^ 89 

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken ! 

What had 1 on earth to do 
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly ? 
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel 

— Being — who ? lo 

One who never turned his back but marched breast 
forward. 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would 
triumph. 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake. 

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time 

Greet the unseen with a cheer ! 
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 
" Strive and thrive ! '' cry " Speed, — fight on, fare 
ever 

There as here ! " 20 



90 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 



"DE GUSTIBUS — '' 

YouPv ghost will walk, you lover of trees, 

(If our loves remain) 

In an English lane, 
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies. 
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice — 
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please, 

Making love, say, — 

The happier they ! 
Draw yourself np from the light of the moon, 
And let them pass, as they will too soon. 

With the beanflower's boon, 

And the blackbird's tune. 

And May, and Jime ! 

What I love best in all the world 
Is a castle, precipice-encurled, 
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine. 
Or look for me, old fellow of mine, 
(If I get my head from out the mouth 
0' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands, 
And come again to the land of lands) — 
In a sea-side house to the farther South, 
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth. 



"DE GUSTIBUS — *' 91 

And one sharp tree — 'tis a cypress — stands, 

By the many hundred years red-rusted, 

Eough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted. 

My sentinel to guard the sands 

To the water's edge. Eor, what expands 

Before the house, but the great opaque 

Blue breadth of sea without a break ? 

While, in the house, forever crumbles 30 

Some fragment of the frescoed walls. 

From blisters where a scorpion sprawls. 

A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles 

Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons, 

And says there's news to-day — the king 

Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing. 

Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling : 

— She hopes they have not caught the felons. 

Italy, my Italy ! 

Queen Mary's saying serves for me — 4a 

(When fortune's malice 

Lost her, Calais) 
Open my heart and you will see 
Graved inside of it, " Italy." 
Such lovers old are I and she : 
So it always was, so shall ever be ! 



92 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 



THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 

That second time they hunted me 

From hill to plain, from shore to sea, 

And Austria, hounding far and wide 

Her blood-hounds thro' the country-side, 

Breathed hot an instant on my trace, — 

I made, six days, a hiding-place 

Of that dry green old aqueduct 

Where I and Charles,^ when boys, have plucked 

The fire-flies from the roof above. 

Bright creeping thro' the moss they love : i< 

— How long it seems since Charles was lost ! 

Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed 

The country in my very sight ; 

And when that peril ceased at night, 

The sky broke out in red dismay 

With signal-fires. Well, there I lay 

Close covered o'er in my recess. 

Up to the neck in ferns and cress. 

Thinking on Metternich,° our friend, 

And Charles's miserable end, i( 

And much beside, two days ; the third, 

Hunger overcame me when I heard 



THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 93 

The peasants from the village go 

To work among the maize : yoii know, 

With us in Lombardy,° they bring 

Provisions packed on mules, a string, 

With little bells that cheer their task, 

And casks, and boughs on every cask 

To keep the sun's heat from the wine ; 

These I let pass in jingling line ; 3° 

And, close on them, dear noisy crew. 

The peasants from the village, too ; 

For at the very rear would troop 

Their wives and sisters in a group 

To help, I knew. When these had passed, 

I threw my glove to strike the last. 

Taking the chance: she did not start, 

Much less cry out, but stooped apart, 

One instant rapidly glanced round, 

And saw me beckon from the ground. 40 

A wild bush grows and hides my crypt ; 

She picked my glove up while she stripped 

A branch off, then rejoined the rest 

With that ; my glove lay in her breast : 

Then 1 drew breath ; they disappeared : 

It was for Italy I feared. 



94 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

, An hour, and she returned alone 
Exactly where my glove was thrown. 
Meanwhile came many thoughts : on me 
Eested the hopes of Italy. 50 

I had devised a certain tale 
Which, when 'twas told her, could not fail 
Persuade a peasant of its truth; 
I meant to call a freak of youth 
This hiding, and give hopes of pay, 
And no temptation to betray. 
But when I saw that woman's face, 
Its calm simplicity of gra,ce. 
Our Italy's own attitude 

In which she walked thus far, and stood, 60 

Planting each naked foot so firm. 
To crush the snake and spare the worm — 
At first sight of her eyes, I said, 
'^ I am that man upon whose head 
They fix the price, because I hate 
The Austrians over us ; the State 
Will give you gold — oh, gold so much ! — 
If you betray me to their clutch, 
And be your death, for aught I know. 
If once they find you saved their foe. 70 

Now, you must bring me food and drink, 



THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 95 

And also paper, pen and ink, 

And carry safe what I shall write 

To Padua, which you'll reach at night 

Before the duomo shuts ; go in, 

And wait till Tenebrse^ begin ; 

Walk to the third confessional, 

Between the pillar and the wall. 

And kneeling whisper, Wlience comes peace? 

Say it a second time, then cease ; 80 

And if the voice inside returns, 

From Christ and Freedom ; wlwjt concerns 

The cause of Peace? — for answer, slip 

My letter where you placed your lip ; 

Then come back happy we have done 

Our mother service — I, the son, 

As you the daughter of our land ! '^ 

Three mornings more, she took her stand 
In the same place, with the same eyes : 
I was no surer of sun-rise 90 

Than of her coming. We conferred 
Of her own prospects, and I heard 
She had a lover — stout and tall. 
She said — then let her eyelids fall, 
'^ He could do much " — as if some doubt 



96 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Entered her heart, — then, passing out, 
" She could not speak for others, who 
Had other thoughts ; herself she knew : " 
And so she brought me drink and food. 
After four days, the scouts pursued 
Another path ; at last arrived 
The help my Paduan friends contrived 
To furnish me : she brought the news. 
For the first time I could not choose 
But kiss her hand, and lay my own 
Upon her head — "This faith was shown 
To Italy, our mother ; she 
Uses my hand and blesses thee.'' 
She followed down to the sea-shore; 
I left and never saw her more. 

How very long since I have thought 
Concerning — much less wished for — aught 
Beside the good of Italy. 
For which I live and mean to die ! 
I never was in love ; and since 
Charles proved false, what shall now convince 
My inmost heart I have a friend ? 
However, if I pleased to spend 
Real wishes on myself — say, three — 



THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND 97 

I know at least what one should be. 120 

I would grasp Metternich until 

I felt his red wet throat distil 

In blood thro' these two hands. And next, 

— Nor much for that am I perplexed — 
Charles, perjured traitor, for his part, 
Should die slow of a broken heart 
Under his new employers. Last 

— Ah, there, what should I wish ? For fast 
Do I grow old and out of strength. 

If I resolved to seek at length 130 

My father's house again, how scared 
They all would look, and unprepared ! 
My brothers live in Austria's pay 

— Disowned me long ago, men say; 
And all my early mates who used 
To praise me so — perhaps induced 
More than one early step of mine — 
Are turning wise : while some opine 

" Freedom grows license," some suspect 

" Haste breeds delay," and recollect 140 

They always said, such premature 

Beginnings never could endure! 

So, with a sullen '^ All's for best," 

The land seems settling to its rest. 



98 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

I think then^ I should wish to stand 

This evening in that dear, lost land, 

Over the sea the thousand miles, 

And know if yet that woman smiles 

With the calm smile ; some little farm 

She lives in there, no doubt : what harm 150 

If I sat on the door-side bench. 

And while her spindle made a trench 

Fantastically in the dust, 

Inquired of all her fortunes — just 

Her children's ages and their names, 

And what may be the husband's aims 

For each of them. I'd talk this out. 

And sit there, for an hour about. 

Then kiss her hand once more, and lay 

Mine on her head, and go my way. 160 

So much for idle wishing — how 
It steals the time ! To business now. 



MY LAST DUCHESS 99 

MY LAST DUCHESS 

Ferrara 

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, 

Looking as if she were alive. I call 

That piece a wonder, now : Fra Pandolf s° hands 

Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 

Will 't please you sit and look at her ? I said 

" Fra Pandolf '' by design : for never read 

Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 

The depth and passion of its earnest glance. 

But to myself they turned (since none puts by 

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) lo 

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, 

How such a glance came there ; so, not the first 

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not 

Her husband's presence only, called that spot 

Of joy into the Duchess' cheek : perhaps 

Fra Pandolf chanced to say ^^ Her mantle laps 

Over my lady's wrist too much," or '^ Paint 

Must never hope to reproduce the faint 

Half-flush that dies along her throat : " such stuff 

Was courtesy, she thought, and-oause enough 20 



100 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

For calling up tliat spot of joy. She had 

A heart — how shall I say ? — too soon made glad, 

Too easily impressed ; she liked whate'er 

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 

Sir, 'twas all one ! My favour at her breast, 

The dropping of the daylight in the West, 

The bough of cherries some officious fool 

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 

She rode with round the terrace — all and each 

Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 30 

Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good ! but 

thanked 
Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked 
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame 
This sort of trifling ? Even had you skill 
In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will 
Quite clear to such an one, and say, " Just this 
Or that in you disgusts me ; here you miss. 
Or there exceed the mark " — and if she let 
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40 

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, 
— E'en then would be some stooping ; and I choose 
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt. 
Whene'er I passed her ; but who passed without 



SAINT PRAXED^S CHURCH 101 

Much the same smile ? This grew; I gave commands ; 

Then all smiles stopped together.^ There she stands 

As if alive. Will 't please you rise ? We'll meet 

The company below, then. I repeat, 

The Count your master's known munificence 

Is ample warrant that no just pretence 50 

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed ; 

Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed 

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go 

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though^ 

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity. 

Which Glaus of Innsbruck" cast in bronze for me ! 



THE BISHOP OEDEES HIS TOMB AT SAINT 
PEAXED'S CHUECH 

EOME, 15 — 

Vakity, saith the preacher, vanity ! 

Draw round my bed : is Anselm keeping back ? 

Nephews — sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well, 

She, men would have to be your mother once, 

Old Gandolf' envied me, so fair she was ! 

What's done is done, and she is dead beside, 



102 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Dead long ago^ and I am Bishop since, 

And as she died so must we die ourselves, 

And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream. 

Life, how and what is it ? As here I lie lo 

In this state-chamber, dying by degrees. 

Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask 

" Do I live, am I dead ? '' Peace, peace seems all. 

Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace ; 

And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought 

With tooth and nail to save my niche,, ye know : 

— Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; 
Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South 
He graced his carrion with, God curse the same ! 

Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20 

One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, _ 

And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, 

And up into the aery dome where live 

The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: 

And I shall fill my slab of basalt there. 

And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest. 

With those nine columns round me, two and two, 

The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands : 

Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe 

As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30 

— Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,"" . .. 



SAINT P RAXED ^S CHURCH 103 

Put me where I may look at hixii ! True peach, 

Eosy and flawless : how I earned the prize ! 

Draw close : that conflagration of my church 

— What then ? So much was saved if aught were 

missed ! 
My sons, ye would not be my death ? Go dig 
The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, 
Drop water gently till the surface sink, 
And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I ! . . . 
Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, 40 

And corded up in a tight olive-frail,° 
Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,^ 
Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape. 
Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast ... 
Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, 
That brave Frascati° villa, with its bath. 
So, let the blue lump poise between my knees. 
Like God the Father's globe on both his hands 
Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay. 
For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst ! 50 
Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years : 
Man goeth to the grave, and where is he ? 
Did I say, basalt for my slab, sons ? Black — 
'Twas ever antique-black I meant ! How else 
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath ? 



104 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, 

Those Pans and ]N"ymphs ye wot of, and perchance 

Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, 

The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, 

Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 60 

Eeady to twitch the Nymph's last garment off. 

And Moses with the tables^ . . . but I know 

Ye mark me not ! What do they whisper thee, 

Child of my bowels, Ansel m ? Ah, ye hope 

To revel down my villas while I gasp 

Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine 

Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at ! 

iSTay, boys, ye love me — all of jasper, then ! 

^Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve 

My bath must needs be left behind, alas ! 70 

One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut. 

There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world — 

And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray 

Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts. 

And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs ? 

— That's if ye carve my epitaph aright. 

Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's° every word, 

No gaudy ware like Gandolf 's second line — 

Tully, my masters ? Ulpian° serves his need ! 

And then how I shall lie thro' centuries, 80 



SAINT PRAXED^S CHURCH 105 

And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, 

And see God made and eaten all day long, 

And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste 

Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke ! 

For as I lie here, hours of the dead night. 

Dying in state and by such slow degrees, 

I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, 

And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, 

And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop 

Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work : 90 

And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts 

Grow, with a certain humming in my ears. 

About the life before I lived this life. 

And this life too, popes, cardinals, and priests, 

Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, 

Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, 

And new-found agate urns as fresh as day. 

And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, 

— Aha, ELUCESCEBAT° quoth our friend ? 

No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best ! 100 

Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. 

All lapis^ all, sons ! Else I give the Pope 

My villas ! Will ye ever eat my heart ? 

Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, 

They glitter like your mother's for my soul. 



106 SHORTEIt POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze, 

Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase 

With grapes, and add a visor and a Term, 

And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx 

That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, i 

To comfort me on my entablature 

Whereon I am to lie till I must ask 

" Do I live, am I dead ? '' There, leave me, there ! 

For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude 

To death — ye wish it — God, ye wish it ! stone — 

Gritstone, a-crumble ! clammy squares which sweat 

As if the corpse they keep were oozing through — 

And no more lapis to delight the world ! 

Well, go ! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there. 

But in a row : and, going, turn your backs i 

— Ay, like departing altar-ministrants. 

And leave me in my church, the church for peace, ^ 

That I may watch at leisure if he leers — 

Old Gandolf — at me, from his onion-stone, 

As still he envied me, so fair she was ! 



THE LABORATORY 107 

THE LABOEATOEY 

Ancieist Eegime 

Kow that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, 
May gaze through these faint smokes curling whitely, 
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil' s-smithy — 
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee ? 

He is with her, and they know that I know 

Where they are, what they do : they believe my tears 

flow 
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear 
Empty church, to pray God in, for them ! — I am here ! 

Grind away, moisten and mash- up thy paste. 

Pound at thy powder, I am not in haste 1 lo 

Better sit thus and observe thy strange things. 

Than go where men wait me, and dance at the King's. 

That in the mortar — you call it a gum ? 

Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come ! 

And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue. 

Sure to taste sweetly, — is that poison, too ? 



108 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures, 

What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures ! 

To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, 

A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket ! 20 

Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give 
And Pauline should have 3 ust thirty minutes to live ! 
But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head 
And her breast and her arms and her hands, should 
drop dead ! 

Quick — is it finished ? The colour's too grim ! 
Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim ? 
Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir, 
And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer ! 

What a drop ! She's not little, no minion like me ! 
That's why she ensnared him : this never will free 30 
The soul from those masculine eyes, — say " No ! " 
To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go. 

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought 

My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought 

Could I keep them one half-minute fixed, she would 

fall 
Shrivelled ; she fell not : yet this does it all ! 



HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD 109 

Not that I bid you spare her the pain ; 

Let death be felt and the proof remain : 

Brand, burn up, bite into its grace — 

He is sure to remember her dying face ! 40 

Is it done ? Take my mask off ! Nay, be not morose ; 
It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close : 
The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee ! 
If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me ? 

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill. 
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will ! 
But brush this dust off me, blest horror it brings 
Ere I know it — next moment I dance at the King's ! 



HOME THOUGHTS, FEOM ABEOAD 

Oh, to be in England 

Now that April's there. 

And whoever wakes in England 

Sees, some morning, unaware, 

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 

Bound the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf. 

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 

In England — now ! 



110: SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

And after April^ when May follows, 

And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows ! lo 

Hark ! where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge 

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 

Blossoms and. dewdrops — at the bent spray's edge — 

That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over, 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 

The first fine careless rapture ! 

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, 

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew 

The buttercups, the little children's dower 

— Ear brighter than this gaudy melon-flower ! 20 



UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IK THE CITY 

{As distinguished by an Italian person of quality.) 

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to 

spare. 
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city 

square ; 
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window 

there! 



UP AT A VILLA— DOWN IN THE CITY 111 

Something to see, by Bacchus,° sometMng to hear, at 

least ! 
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast ; 
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more 

than a beast. 

Well now, look at our villa ! stuck like the horn of a 

bull 
Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature's 

skull. 
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull ! 
— I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's 

turned wool. lo 

But the city, oh the city — the square with the houses ! 
Why ? 

They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's some- 
thing to take the eye ! 

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry ; 

You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who 
hurries by ; 

Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the 
sun gets high; 

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted 
properly. 



112 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

What of a villa ? Tho' winter be over in March by- 
rights, 

'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered 
well off the heights : 

You've the brown ploughed land before, where the 
oxen steam and wheeze, 

And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray 
olive trees. 20 



Is it better in May, I ask you ? You've summer all 

at once ; 
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April 

suns. 
'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three 

fingers well, 
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great 

red bell 
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to 

pick and sell. 

Is it ever hot in the square ? There' s a fountain to 

spout and splash ! 
In the shade it sings and springs ; in the shine such 

foam-bows flash 



UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 113 

On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and 

paddle and pash 
Eound the lady atop in her conch — fifty gazers do not 

abash, 
Tho' all that she wears is some weeds round her waist 

in a sort of sash. 30 

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though 

you linger, 
Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted 

forefinger. 
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn 

and mingle. 
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem 

a-tingle. 
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala 

is shrill. 
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the 

resinous firs on the hill. 
Enough of the seasons, — I spare you the months of 

the fever and chill. 



Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church- 
bells begin : 



114 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Ko sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rat- 
tles in : 
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a 

pin. 40 

By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets 

blood, draws teeth ; 
Or the Pulcinello°-trunipet breaks up the market be- 
neath. 
At the post-office such a scene-picture — the new play, 

piping hot ! 
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal 

thieves were shot. 
Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of 

rebukes. 
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little 

new law of the Duke's ! 
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Eeverend Don 

So-and-so, 
Who is Dante,° Boccaccio,° Petrarca,° St. Jerome° and 

Cicero,° 
"And moreover" (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the 

skirts of St. Paul has reached," 
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more 

unctuous than ever he preached." 50 

Noon strikes, — here sweeps the procession ! QurfXady° 

borne smilin^^ and smart. 



UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 115 

With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords° 
stuck in her heart ! 

Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife ; 

No keeping one's haunches still : it's the greatest pleas- 
ure in life. 

But bless you, it's dear — it's dear! fowls, wine, at 

double the rate. 
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil 

pays passing the gate 
It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, 

not the city ! 
Beggars can scarcely be choosers : but still — ah, the 

pity, the pity ! 
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with 

cowls and sandals. 
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding 

the yellow candles ; 60 

One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross 

with handles. 
And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the better 

prevention of scandals : 
Bang-whang-tuhang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife. 
Oh, a day in the city square, there is no such pleasure 

in life ! 



116 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 



A TOCCATA OF GALUPPPS 

Oh Galuppi,° Baldassaro, this is very sad to find ! 

I can hardly misconceive you ; it would prove me deaf 

and blind ; 
But altho' I take your meaningj ^tis with such a heavy 

mind! 

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the 
good it brings. 

What, they lived once thus at Venice where the mer- 
chants were the kings, 

Where St. Mark's^ is, where the Doges used to wed the 
sea with rings ° ? 

Ay, because the sea's the street there ; and 'tis arched 

by . . . what you call 
. . . Shy lock's bridge^ with houses on it, where they 

kept the carnival : 
I was never out of England — it's as if I saw it all. 

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea 
was warm in May ? lo 

Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to 
mid-day. 

When they make up fresh adventures for the morrow, 
do you say ? 



A TOCCATA OF GALUPFl'S 117 

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so 

red, — 
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower 

on its bed. 
O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might 

base his head ? 

Well, and it was graceful of them : they'd break talk 

off and afford 
—•She, to bite her mask's black velvet — he, to finger 

on his sword. 
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the 

clavichord ° ? 

What ? Those lesser thirds° so plaintive, sixths" 

diminished sigh on sigh, 
Told them something ? Those suspensions," those 

solutions" — "Must we die?" 20 

Those commiserating sevenths" — " Life might last ! 

we can but try ! " 

" Were you happy ? " — " Yes." — " And are you still 

as happy ? " — " Yes. And you ? " 
— " Then, more kisses ! " — " Did / stop them, when a 

million seemed so few ? " 



118 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be an- 
swered to ! 

So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised 

you, I dare say ! 
" Brave Galuppi ! that was music ! good alike at grave 

and gay ! 
I can always leave off talking when I hear a master 

play 1 '' 

Then they left you for their pleasure : till in due time, 

one by one. 
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds 

as well undone. 
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never 

see the sun.° 30 

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand 

nor swerve, 
While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's 

close reserve, 
In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' 

every nerve. 

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a 
house was burned : 



A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI^S 119 

"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent 

what Venice earned. 
The soul, doubtless, is immortal — where a soul can be 

discerned. 

" Yours, for instance : you know physics, something of 

geology. 
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in 

their degree; 
Butterflies may dread extinction, — you'll not die, it 

cannot be ! ° 

" As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom 
and drop, 40 

Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly 
were the crop : 

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had 
to stop ? 

"Dust and ashes! '' So you creak it, and I want the 

heart to scold. 
Dear dead women, with such hair, too — what's become 

of all the gold 
Used to hang and brush their bosoms ? I feel chilly 

and grown old. 



120 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

ABT VOGLEE 

(After he has been Extemporizing upon the 
Musical Instrument of his Invention) 

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music 
I build, 
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their 
work, 
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when 
Solomon° willed 
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that 
lurk, 
Man, brute, reptile, fly, — alien of end and of aim, 
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep 
removed, — 
Should rush into sight at once as he named the in- 
effable Name, 
And pile him a palace° straight, to pleasure the 
princess he loved ! 

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building 
of mine. 
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and im- 
portuned to raise ! lo 



ABT VOGLER 121 

Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now 
and now combine, 
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master 
his praise ! 
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge 
down to hell. 
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things, 
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my 
palace well. 
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether 
springs. 

And another would mount and march, like the excellent 
minion he was. 
Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with 
many a crest. 
Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as 
glass, 
Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest : 20 
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire. 
When a great illumination surprises a festal night — 
Outlining round and round Eome's dome° from space 
to spire) 
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of 
my soul was in sight. 



122 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

In sight ? Not half ! for it seemed, it was certain, to 
match man's birth, 
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse 
as I; 
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to 
reach the earth. 
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to 
scale the sky : 
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt 
with mine, 
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wander- 
ing star ; 30 
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale 
nor pine, 
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more 
near nor far. 

Nay more ; for there wanted not who walked in the 
glare and glow. 
Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the 
Protoplast, 
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind 
should blow. 
Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their 
liking at last ; 



ABT VOOLER 123 

Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed thro' the 
body and gone, 
But were back once more to breathe in an old world 
worth their new : 
What never had been, was now ; what was, as it shall 
be anon ; 
And what is, — shall I say, matched both? for I 
was made perfect too. 40 

All thro' my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of 
my soul. 
All thro' my soul that praised as its wish flowed 
visibly forth, 
All thro' music and me ! For think, had I painted the 
whole, 
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so 
wonder-worth : 
Had I written the same, made verse — still, effect 
proceeds from cause. 
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the 
tale is told ; 
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to 
laws. 
Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list en- 
rolled : — 



124 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that 
can, 
Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, lo, 
they are ! 50 

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed 
to man, 
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth 
sound, but a star. 
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is 
naught ; 
It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all is 
said : 
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my 
thought. 
And, there ! Ye have heard and seen : consider and 
bow the head ! 

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I 
reared ; 
Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that 
come too slow ; 
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he 
feared. 
That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was 
to go. 60 



ABT VOGLER 125 

Never to be again ! But many more of the kind 
As good, nay, better perchance : is this your comfort 
to me ? 
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my 
mind 
To the same, same self, same love, same God : ay, 
what was, shall be. 

Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable 
Name ? 
Builder and maker. Thou, of houses not made with 
hands ! 
What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the 
same ? 
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy 
power expands ? 
There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall 
live as before ; 
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying 
sound ; 70 

What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much 
good more ; 
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a 
perfect round. 



126 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall 
exist ; 
Not its semblance, but itself ; no beauty, nor good, 
nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the 
melodist. 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth 
too hard. 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in 
the sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; 
Enough that he heard it once ; we shall hear it by 
and by. 80 

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 
For the fulness of the days ? Have we withered or 
agonized ? 
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing 
might issue thence ? 
Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should 
be prized ? 
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear. 
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal 
and woe : 



RABBI BEN EZRA 127 

But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear ; 
The rest may reason and welcome ; 'tis we musicians 
know. 

Well, it is earth with me ; silence resumes her reign : 
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce. 90 
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again, 
Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor, — yes. 
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien 
ground. 
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the 
deep : 
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting- 
place is found, 
The C Major of this life : so, now I will try to sleep. 



EABBI BEN EZEA 

Grow old along with me° ! 

The best is yet to be. 

The last of life, for which the first was made : 

Our times are in His hand 



128 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Who saith " A whole I planned, 

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be 
afraid ! '' 

Not that, amassing flowers, 
Youth sighed, " Which rose make ours. 
Which lily leave and then as best recall ! '' 
Wot that, admiring stars, lo 

It yearned " Nor Jove, nor Mars ; 
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends 
them all ! '' 

Not for such hopes and fears 

Annulling youth's brief years. 

Do I remonstrate : folly wide the mark ! 

E-ather I prize the doubt 

Low kinds exist without, 

Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. 

Poor vaunt of life indeed. 

Were man but formed to feed 20 

On joy, to solely seek and find and feast: 
Such feasting ended, then 
As sure an end to men ; 

Irks care the crop-full bird ? Frets doubt the maw- 
crammed beast ? 



RABBI BEN EZRA 129 

Eejoice we are allied 
To That which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive ! 
A spark disturbs our clod ; 
Nearer we hold of ° God 

Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must 
believe. 30 

Then, welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! 
Be our joys three-parts pain ! 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the 
throe ! 

For thence, — a paradox 
Which comforts while it mocks, — 
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail : 
What I aspired to be, 40 

And was not, comforts me : 

A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the 
scale. 

What is he but a brute 
Whose flesh has soul to suit, 



130 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play ? 

To man, propose tliis test — 

Thy body at its best, 

How far can that project thy soul on its lone way ? 

Yet gifts should prove their use : 

I own the Past profuse 50 

Of power each side, perfection every turn : 
Eyes, ears took in their dole, 
Brain treasured up the whole ; 

Should not the heart beat once " How good to live and 
learn ? '' 

Not once beat '^ Praise be Thine ! 
I see the whole design, 
I, who saw power, see now love perfect too : 
Perfect I call Thy plan : 
Thanks that I was a man ! 

Maker, remake, complete, — I trust what Thou shalt 
do ! '' 60 

For pleasant is this flesh ; 

Our soul, in its rose-mesh 

Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest : 

Would we some prize might hold 



RABBI BEN EZRA 131 

To match those manifold 

Possessions of the brute, — gain most, as we did best ! 

Let us not always sa}^, 
" Spite of this flesh to-day 

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole ! '^ 
As the bird wings and sings, 70 

Let us cry " All good things 

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh 
helps soul ! " 

Therefore I summon age 

To grant youth's heritage. 

Life's struggle having so far reached its term : 

Thence shall I pass, approved 

A man, for aye removed 

Prom the developed brute ; a God tho' in the germ. 

And I shall thereupon 

Take rest, ere I be gone 8c 

Once more on my adventure brave and new ; 

Fearless and unperplexed. 

When I wage battle next, 

What weapons to select, what armour to indue. 



132 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Youth ended, I shall try 

My gain or loss thereby ; 

Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold : 

And I shall weigh the same, 

Give life its praise or blame : 

Young, all lay in dispute ; I shall know, being old. 90 

For, note when evening shuts, 

A certain moment cuts 

The deed off, calls the glory from the gray : 

A whisper from the west 

Shoots — " Add this to the rest. 

Take it and try its worth : here dies another day.'^ 

So, still within this life, 

Tho' lifted o'er its strife, 

Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, 

" This rage was right i' the main, roo 

That acquiescence vain : 

The Future I may face now T have proved the Past.'' 

For more is not reserved 

To man, with soul just nerved 

To act to-morrow what he learns to-day : 

Here, work enough to watch 



RABBI BEN EZRA 133 

The Master work, and catch 

Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play. 

As it was better, youth 

Should strive, thro' acts uncouth, no 

Toward making, than repose on aught found made : 

So, better, age, exempt 

From strife, should know, than tempt 

Further. Thou waitedst age : wait death, nor be afraid ! 

Enough now, if the Eight 
And Good and Infinite 

Be named"* here, as thou callest thy hand thine own. 
With knowledge absolute. 
Subject to no dispute 

From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel 
• alone. 120 

Be there, for once and all, 
Severed great minds from small. 
Announced to each his station in the Past ! 
Was I,° the world arraigned. 
Were they, my soul disdained. 

Eight? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at 
last! 



134 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

ISTow, who sliall arbitrate ? 
Ten men love what I hate, 
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive ; 
Ten, who in ears and eyes 130 

Match me : we all surmise. 

They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall my soul 
believe ? 

Not on the vulgar mass 

Called " work," must sentence pass. 

Things done, that took the eye and had the price ; 

O'er which, from level stand. 

The low world laid its hand. 

Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice : 

But all, the world's coarse thumb 

And finger failed to plumb, 140 

So passed in making up the main account: 
All instincts immature, 
All purposes unsure, 

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's 
amount° : 

Thoughts hardly to be packed 

Into a narrow act. 

Fancies that broke thro' language and escaped: 



I 



RABBI BEJY EZRA 135 

All I could never be, 
All, men ignored in me, 

This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher 
shaped. 150 

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,° 
That metaphor ! and feel 

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay, — 
Thou, to whom fools propound. 
When the wine makes its round, 

" Since life fleets, all is change ; the Past gone, seize 
to-day ! " 

Fool ! All that is, at all. 
Lasts ever, past recall ; 

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure ; 
What entered into thee, 160 

That was, is, and shall be : 

Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and clay 
endure. 

He fixed thee mid this dance 

Of plastic circumstance. 

This Present, thou forsooth, wouldst fain arrest : 

Machinery just meant 



136 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

To give thy soul its bent, 

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. 

What tho' the earlier grooves 

Which ran the laughing loves 17c 

Around thy base, no longer pause and press° ? 

What tho' about thy rim, 

Scull-things in order grim 

Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress° ? 

Look not thou down but up ! 
To uses of a cup 

The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, 
The new wine's foaming flow, 
The Master's lips a-glow ! 

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou 
with earth's wheel ? 180 

But I need, now as then, 

Thee, God, who mouldest men ! 

And since, not even while the whirl was worst, 

Did I, — to the wheel of life 

With shapes and colours rife. 

Bound dizzily, — mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst : 



A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 137 

So take and use Thy work, 
Amend what flaws may lurk, 

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim ! 
My times be in Thy hand! 19a 

Perfect the cup as planned ! 

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the 
same! 



A GEAMMAEIAN'S FUNEFvAL 

Shortly after thp: Eeviyal of Learning in 
Europe 

Let us begin and carry up this corpse. 

Singing together. 
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes. 

Each in its tether 
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, 

Cared-for till cock-crow : 
Look out if yonder be not day again 

Eimming the rock-row ! 
That's the appropriate country ; there, man's thought, 

Earer, intenser, la 

Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, 

Chafes in the censer. 



138 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop ; 

Seek we sepulture 
On a tall mountain, citied to the top, 

Crowded with culture ! 
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels ; 

Clouds overcome it ; 
^N"© ! yonder sparkle is the citadeFs 

Circling its summit. 2c 

Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: 

Wait ye the warning ? 
Our low lif e° was the level's and the night's : 

He's for the morning. 
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 

'Ware the beholders ! 
This is our master, famous calm and dead, 

Borne on our shoulders. 

Sleep, crop and herd ! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, 

Safe from the weather ! 30 

He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, 

Singing together. 
He was a man born with thy face and throat, 

L^^ric Apollo ! 
Long he lived nameless : how should spring take note 

Winter would follow ? 



A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 139 

Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone ! 

Cramped and diminished, 
Moaned he, " New measures, other feet anon ! 

My dance is finished ? ^' 40 

No, that's the world's way; (keep the mountain- 
side. 

Make for the city !) 
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride 

Over men's pity ; 
Left play for work, and grappled with the world 

Bent on escaping^: 
" What's in the scroll," quoth he, " thou keepest furled ? 

Show me their shaping,^ 
Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, — 

Give ! " — So, he gowned him, 50 

Straight got by heart that book to its last page : 

Learned, we found him. 
Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, 

Accents uncertain : 
^•Time to taste life," another would have said, 

" Up with the curtain ! " 
This man said rather, " Actual life comes next ? 

Patience a moment ! 
Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, 

Still there's the comment. 60 



140 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Let me know all ! Prate not of most or least, 

Painful or easy ! 
Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, 

Ay, nor feel queasy." 
Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, 

When he had learned it. 
When he had gathered all books had to give I 

Sooner, he spurned it. 
Image the whole, then execute the parts — 

Fancy the fabric 70 

Quite, ere you build, ere steel strikes fire from quartz, 

Ere mortar dab brick ! 

(Here's the town-gate reached ; there's the market-place 

Gaping before us.) 
Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace 

(Hearten our chorus !) 
That before living he'd learn how to live — 

No end to learning : 
Earn the means first — God surely will contrive 

Use for our earning. 80 

Others mistrust and say, " But time escapes ! 

Live now or never ! " 
He said, '' What's time ? Leave Kow for dogs and apes ! 

Man has Forever." 



A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 141 

Back to his book then : deeper drooped his head : 

Calculus racked him : 
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: 

Tussis attacked him. 
"Now, master, take a little rest!'^ — not he! 

(Caution redoubled ! 90 

Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly !) 

l^ot a whit troubled. 
Back to his studies, fresher than at first. 

Fierce as a dragon 
He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) 

Sucked at the flagon. 
Oh, if we draw a circle premature, 

Heedless of far gain,° 
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure 

Bad is our bargain ! 100 

Was it not great ? did not he throw on God 

(He loves the burthen) — 
God's task to make the heavenly period 

Perfect the earthen ? 
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear 

Just what it all meant ? 
He would not discount life, as fools do here. 

Paid by instalment. 
He ventured neck or nothing — heaven's success 



142 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Found, or earth's failure : no 

" Wilt thou trust death or not ? '' He answered '^ Yes ! 

Hence with life's pale lure ! " 
That low man seeks a little thing to do, 

Sees it and does it : 
This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 

Dies ere he knows it. 
That low man goes on adding one to one, 

His hundred's soon hit : 
This high man, aiming at a million, 

Misses an unit. 120 

That, has the world here — should he need the next. 

Let the world mind him ! 
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed 

Seeking shall find Him. 
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife. 

Ground he at grammar ; 
Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife : 

While he could stammer 
He settled Hows'" business — let it be ! — 

Properly based Oiiif — 130 

Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic Dc° 

Dead from the waist down. 
Well; here's the platform, here's the proper place : 

Hail to your purlieus, 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 143 

All ye highfliers of the feathered race, 

Swallows and curlews : 
Here's the top-peak ; the multitude below 

Live, for they can, there : 
This man decided not to Live, but Know — 

Bury this man there ? 140 

Here — here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds 
form. 

Lightnings are loosened, 
Stars come and go ! Let joy break with the storm, 

Peace let the dew send ! 
Lofty designs must close in like effects : 

Loftily lying. 
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects, 

Living and dying. 



ANDEEA DEL SAETO 

(Called ^^The Faultless Painter'') 

But do not let us quarrel any more, 

No, my Lucrezia ! bear with me for once : 

Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. 

You turn your face, but does it bring your heart ? 



144 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, 
Treat his own subject after his own way. 
Fix his own time, accept too his own price, 
And shut the money into this small hand 
When next it takes mine. Will it ? tenderly ? 
Oh, ni content him, — but to-morrow. Love ! 
I often am much wearier than you think. 
This evening more than usual : and it seems 
As if — forgive now — should you let me sit 
Here by the window, with your hand in mine. 
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,° 
Both of one mind, as married people use, 
Quietly, quietly the evening through, 
I might get up to-morrow to my work 
Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. 
To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this ! 
Your soft hand is a woman of itself. 
And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside. 
Don't count the time lost, neither ; you must serve 
For each of the five pictures we require : 
It saves a model. So ! keep looking so — 
My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds ! 
— How could you ever prick those perfect ears, 
Even to put the pearl there ! oh, so sweet — 
My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 145 

Which everybody looks on and calls his, 30 

And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn, 

While she looks — no one's : very dear, no less. 

You smile ? why, there's my picture ready made. 

There's what we painters call our harmony ! 

A common grayness silvers everything, — 

All in a twilight, you and I alike 

— You, at the point of your first pride in me 

(That's gone, you know) — but I, at every point ; 

My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down 

To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 40 

There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top ; 

That length of convent-wall across the way 

Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside ; 

The last monk leaves the garden ; days decrease, 

And autumn grows, autumn in everything. 

Eh ? the whole seems to fall into a shape. 

As if I saw alike my work and self 

And all that I was born to be and do, 

A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand. 

How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead ; 50 

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are ! 

I feel he laid the fetter : let it lie ! 

This chamber for example — turn your head — 

All that's behind us ! You don't understand 



146 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Nor care to understand about my art, 

But you can hear at least when people speak : 

And that cartoon, the second from the door 

— It is the thing, Love ! so such things should be — 
Behold Madonna ! — I am bold to say. 

I can do with my pencil what I know, 60 

What I see, what at bottom of my heart 

I wish for, if I ever wish so deep — 

Do easily, too — when I say, perfectly, 

I do not boast, perhaps : yourself are judge, 

Who listened to the Legate's talk last week; 

And just as much they used to say in France. 

At any rate 'tis easy, all of it ! 

No sketches first, no studies, that's long past : 

I do what many dream of, all their lives, 

— Dream ? strive to do, and agonize to do, 70 
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such 

On twice your fingers, and not leave this town. 
Who strive — you don't know how the others strive 
To jjaint a little thing like that you smeared 
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, — 
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, 
(I know his name, no matter) — so much less ! 
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. 
There burns a truer light of God in them, 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 147 

In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, 80 
Heart, or whatever else, than goes on to prompt 
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. 
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, 
Eeach many a time a heaven that's shut to me. 
Enter and take their place there sure enough, 
Tho' they come back and cannot tell the world. 
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. 
The sudden blood of these rnen ! at a word — 
Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too. 
I, painting from myself and to myself, 90 

Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame 
Or their praise either. Somebody remarks 
Morello's outline there is wrongly traced. 
His hue mistaken ; what of that ? or else, 
Eightly traced and well ordered ; what of that ? 
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care ? 
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. 
Or what's a heaven for ? All is silver-gray, 
Placid and perfect with my art : the worse ! 
I know both what I want and what might gain, 100 
And yet how profitless to know, to sigh 
'' Had I been two, another and myself. 
Our head would have o'erlooked the world ! " No 
doubt. 



148 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth 

The Urbinate who died five years ago. 

('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.) 

Well, I can fancy how he did it all, 

Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, 

Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, 

Above and thro^ his art — for it gives way ; i: 

That arm is wrongly put — and there again — 

A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, 

Its body, so to speak : its soul is right, 

He means right — that, a child may understand. 

Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: 

But all the play, the insight and the stretch — 

Out of me, out of me ! And wherefore out ? 

Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, 

"We might have risen to Rafael," I and you ! 

Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think — i 

More than I merit, yes, by many times. 

But had you — oh, with the same perfect brow, 

And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, 

And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird 

The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare — 

Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind ! 

Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged 

^' God and the glory ! never care for gain. 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 149 

The present by the future, what is that ? 

Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo° ! 130 

Rafael is waiting : up to God, all three ! '' 

I might have done it for you. So it seems : 

Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules. 

Beside, incentives come from the souPs self ^ 

The rest avail not. Why do I need you ? 

What wife had Eafael, or has Agnolo ? 

In this world, who can do a thing, will not ; 

And who would do it, cannot, I perceive : 

Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power — 

And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, 140 

God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 

'Tis safer for me, if the award be strict, 

That I am something underrated here. 

Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth. 

I dared not, do you know, leave home all day, 

For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. 

The best is when they pass and look aside ; 

But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all. 

Well may they speak ! That Francis, that first time, 

And that long festal year at Fontainebleau° ! 150 

I surely then could sometimes leave the ground. 

Put on the glory, EafaePs daily wear. 

In that humane great monarch's golden look, — 



150 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

One finger in his beard or twisted curl 

Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile. 

One arm about my shoulder, round my neck, 

The jingle of his gold chain in my ear, 

I painting proudly with his breath on me, 

All his court round him, seeing with his eyes. 

Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls i6o 

Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts, — 

And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond. 

This in the background, waiting on my work. 

To crown the issue with a last reward ! 

A good time, was it not, my kingly days ? 

And had you not grown restless . . . but I know — 

'Tis done and past ; 'twas right, my instinct said ; 

Too live the life grew, golden and not gray : 

And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt 

Out of the grange whose four walls make his world. 170 

How could it end in any other way ? 

You called me, and I came home to your heart. 

The triumph was — to reach and stay there ; since 

I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost ? 

Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold, 

You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine ! 

" Eafael did this, Andrea painted that ; 

The Roman's is the better when you pray, 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 151 

But still the other's Virgin was his wife — " 

Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge i8o 

Both pictures in your presence ; clearer grows 

My better fortune, I resolve to think. 

For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, 

Said one day Agnolo, his very self, 

To Eafael ... I have known it all these years . . . 

(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts 

Upon a palace-wall for Eome to see. 

Too lifted up in heart because of it) 

" Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub 

Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 190 

Who, were he set to plan and execute 

As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, 

Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours ! " 

To Rafael's ! — And indeed the arm is wrong. 

I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see. 

Give the chalk here — quick, thus the line should go ! 

Ay, but the soul ! he's Rafael ! rub it out ! 

Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, 

(What he ? why, who but Michel Agnolo ? 

Do you forget already words like those ?) 200 

If really there was such a chance so lost, — 

Is, whether you're — not grateful — but more pleased. 

Well, let me think, so. And you smile indeed ! 



152 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

This hour has been an hour ! Another smile ? 

If you would sit thus by me every night 

I should work better, do you comprehend ? 

I mean that I should earn more, give you more. 

See, it is settled dusk now ; there's a star ; 

Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall, 

The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. 21c 

Come from the window, Love, — come in, at last, 

Inside the melancholy little house 

We built to be so gay with. God is just. 

King Francis may forgive me : oft at nights 

When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, 

The walls become illumined, brick from brick 

Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, 

That gold of his I did cement them with ! 

Let us but love each other. Must you go ? 

That Cousin here again ? he waits outside ? 220 

Must see you — you, and not with me ? Those loans ? 

More gaming debts to pay ? you smiled for that ? 

Well, let smiles buy me ! have you more to spend ? 

While hand and eye and something of a heart 

Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth ? 

I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit 

The gray remainder of the evening out. 

Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly 



ANDREA DEL SARTO 153 

How I could paint, were I but back in France, 

One picture, just one more — the Virgin's face, 230 

Not yours this time ! I want you at my side 

To hear them — that is, Michel Agnolo — 

Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. 

Will you ? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. 

I take the subjects for his corridor. 

Finish the portrait out of hand — there, there^ 

And throw him in another thing or two 

If he demurs ; the whole should prove enough 

To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside, 

What's better and what's all I care about, 240 

Get you the thirteen scudi° for the ruff ! 

Love, does that please you ? Ah, but what does he, 

The Cousin ! what does he to please you more ? 

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. 
I regret little, I would change still less. 
Since there my past life lies, why alter it ? 
The very wrong to Francis ! — it is true 
I took his coin, was tempted and complied. 
And built this house and sinned, and all is said. 
My father and my mother died of want. 250 

Well, had I riches of my own ? you see 
How one gets rich ! Let each one bear his lot. 



154 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died : 

And I have laboured somewhat in my time 

And not been paid profusely. Some good son 

Paint my two hundred pictures — let him try ! 

ISTo doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes, 

You love me quite enough, it seems to-night. 

This must suffice me here. What would one have ? 

In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance — 

Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, 261 

Meted on each side by the angel's reed, 

For Leonard,^ Eafael, Agnolo, and me 

To cover — the three first without a wife, 

While I have mine ! So — still fchey overcome 

Because there's still Lucrezia, — as I choose. 

Again the Cousin's whistle ! Go, my Love. 



CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS 155 

CALIBAK UPON SETEBOS; 

OR, 

Natural Theology in the Island 

** Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." 

['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, 

Flat on his belly in the pit's mnch mire, 

With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin, 

And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, 

And feels about his spine small eft-things course, 

Eun in and out each arm, and make him laugh : 

And while above his head a pompion-plant, 

Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye. 

Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, 

And now a flower drops with a bee inside, lo 

And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch, — 

He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross 

And recross till they weave a spider-web, 

(Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times) 

And talks to his own self, howe'er he please. 

Touching that other, whom his dam called God. 

Because to talk about Him, vexes — ha. 

Could He but know ! and time to vex is now, 

When talk is safer than in winter-time. 



156 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep 20 

In confidence, he drudges at tlieir task, 
And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe. 
Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.] 

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos ! 
'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. 

'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, 
But not the stars ; the stars came otherwise ; 
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that : 
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon. 
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same. 30 

'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease : 

He hated that He cannot change His cold, 

Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish 

That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived. 

And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine 

0' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, 

A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave ; 

Only, she ever sickened, found repulse 

At the other kind of water, not her life, 

(Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun) 40 

Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, 



CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS 157 

And in her old bounds buried her despair, 
Hating and loving warmth alike : so He. 

'Thinbeth, He made thereat the sun, this isle, 

Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. 

Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech ; 

Yon auk, one fire-eje in a ball of foam. 

That floats and feeds ; a certain badger brown, 

He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge 

eye 
By moonlight ; and the pie with the long tongue 50 
That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm. 
And says a plain word when she finds her prize, 
But will not eat the ants ; the ants themselves 
That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks 
About their hole — He made all these and more, 
Made all we see, and us, in spite : how else ? 
He could not, Himself, make a second self 
To be His mate : as well have made Himself : 
He would not make what He mislikes or slights, 
An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains ; 60 

But did, in envy, listlessness, or sport. 
Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be — 
Weaker in most points, stronger in a few, 
Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while, 



168 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Things He admires and mocks too, — that is it ! 

Because, so brave, so better tho' they be, 

It nothing skills if He begin to plague. 

Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash. 

Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived. 

Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss, •— 70 

Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all. 

Quick, quick, till maggots scamper thro' my brain ; 

Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme, 

And wanton, wishing I were born a bird. 

Put case, unable to be what I wish, 

I yet could make a live bird out of clay : 

Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban 

Able to fly ? — for there, see, he hath wings. 

And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire, 

And there, a sting to do his foes offence, 80 

There, and I will that he begin to live. 

Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns 

Of grigs high up that make the merry din. 

Saucy thro' their veined wings, and mind me not. 

In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay, 

And he lay stupid-like, — why, I should laugh ; 

And if he, spying me, should fall to weep, 

Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong, 

Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again, — • 



CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS 159 

Well, as the chance were, this might take or else 90 
Not take my fancy : I might hear his cry, 
And give the mankin three sound legs for one, 
Or pluck the other off, leave him like an (^.gg, 
And lessoned he was mine and merely clay. 
Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme. 
Drinking the mash, with brain become alive. 
Making and marring clay at will ? So He. 

'Thinketh such shows nor right nor wrong in Him, 

Nor kind, nor cruel : He is strong and Lord. 

'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs 100 

That march now from the mountain to the sea ; 

'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first. 

Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 

'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots 

Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; 

'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm. 

And two worms he whose nippers end in red : 

As it likes me each time, I do : so He. 

Well then, ^supposeth He is good i' the main. 
Placable if His mind and ways were guessed, no 

But rougher than His handiwork, be sure ! 
Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself, 



160 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

And envieth that, so helped, such things do more 

Than He who made them ! What consoles but this ? 

That they, unless thro' Him, do naught at all, 

And must submit : what other use in things ? 

'Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder-joint 

That, blown through, gives exact the scream o' the jay 

When from her wing yon twitch the feathers blue : 

Sound this, and little birds that hate the ja}^ 120 

Flock within stone's throw, glad their foe is hurt : 

Put case such pipe could prattle and boast forsooth 

'' I catch the birds, I am the crafty thing, 

I make the cry my maker cannot make 

With his great round mouth ; he must blow thro' mine ! " 

Would not I smash it with my foot ? So He. 

But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease ? 
Aha, that is a question ! Ask, for that. 
What knows, — the something over Setebos 
That made Him, or He, may be, found and fought, 130 
Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, perchance. 
There may be something quiet o'er His head. 
Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor grief. 
Since both derive from weakness in some way. 
I joy because the quails come ; would not joy 
Could I bring quails here when I have a mind: 



CALIBAN UPON SKTEBOS 161 

This Quiet, all it liatli a mind to, doth. 

'Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch, 

But never spends much thought nor care that way. 

It may look up, work up, — the worse for those 140 

It works on ! 'Careth but for Setebos 

The many-handed as a cuttle-fish. 

Who, making Himself feared thro' what He does, 

Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar 

To what is quiet and hath happy life ; 

Next looks down here, and out of very spite 

Makes this a bauble-world to ape yon real. 

These good things to match those as hips do grapes. 

'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport. 

Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books 150 

Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle : 

Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped, 

Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words.; 

Has peeled a wand and called it by a name ; 

Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe 

The eyed skin of a supple oncelot ; 

And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, 

A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, 

Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, 

And saith she is Miranda and my wife : 160 

'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane 



162 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge ; 
Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, 
Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame, 
And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge 
In a hole o' the rock, and calls him Caliban ; 
A bitter heart that bides its time and bites. 
'Plays thus at being Prosper in a way, 
Taketh his mirth with make-believes : so He. 

His dam held that the Quiet made all things 170 

Which Setebos vexed only : 'holds not so. 

Who made them weak, meant weakness fie might vex. 

Had He meant other, while His hand was in. 

Why not make horny eyes no thorn could prick, 

Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow, 

Or overscale my flesh 'neath joint and joint. 

Like an ore's armour ? Ay, — so spoil His sport ! 

He is the One now : only He doth all. 

'Saith, He may like, perchance, what profits Him. 
Ay, himself loves what does him good ; but why ? iSo 
'Gets good no otherwise. This blinded beast 
Loves whoso places flesh-meat on his nose. 
But, had he eyes, would want no help, but hate 
Or love, just as it liked him : He hath eyes. 



CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS 163 

Also it pleaseth Setebos to work, 

Use all His hands, and exercise much craft, 

By no means for the love of what is worked. 

'Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world 

When all goes right, in this safe summer-time. 

And he wants little, hungers, aches not much, 190 

Than trying what to do with wit and strength. 

'Falls to make something ; 'piled yon pile of turfs, 

And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk. 

And, with a fish- tooth, scratched a moon on each, 

And set up endwise certain spikes of tree. 

And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top, 

Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to kill. 

No use at all i' the worlf, for work's sole sake ; 

'Shall some day knock it down again : so He. 

'Saith He is terrible : watch His feats in proof! 200 
One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope. 
He hath a spite against me, that I know. 
Just as He favours Prosper, who knows why ? 
So it is, air the same, as well I find. 
'Wove wattles half the winter, fenced them firm 
With stone and stake to stop she-tortoises 
Crawling to lay their eggs here : well, one wave, 
Feeling the foot of Him upon its neck, 



164 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Gaped as a snake does, lolled out its large tongue. 

And licked the whole labour flat ; so much for spite ! 210 

'Saw a ball flame down late (yonder it lies) 

Where, half an hour before, I slept i' the shade : 

Often they scatter sparkles : there is force ! 

'Dug up a newt He may have envied once 

And turned to stone, shut up inside a stone. 

Please Him and hinder this ? — What Prosper does ? 

Aha, if he would tell me how. Not he ! 

There is the sport : discover how or die ! 

All need not die, for of the things 0' the isle 

Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees ; 220 

Those at His mercy, — why, they please Him most 

When . . . when . . . well, never try the same way twice ! 

Eepeat what act has pleased, He may grow wroth. 

You must not know His ways, and play Him off, 

Sure of the issue. 'Doth the like himself : 

'Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears 

But steals the nut from underneath my thumb, 

And when I threat, bites stoutly in defence : 

'Spareth an urchin that contrariwise, 

Curls up into a ball, pretending death 230 

For fright at my approach : the two ways please. 

But what would move my choler more than this, 

That either creature counted on its life 



CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS 165 

To-morrow, next day and all days to come, 

Saying forsooth in the inmost of its heart, 

"Because he did so yesterday with me, 

And otherwise with such another brute, 

So must he do henceforth and always.'^ Ay ? 

'Would teach the reasoning couple what " must '' 

means ! 
'Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord ? So He. 240 

'Conceiveth all things will continue thus, 
And we shall have to live in fear of Him 
So long as He lives, keeps His strength : no change, 
If He have done His best, make no new world 
To please Him more, so leave off watching this, — 
If He surprise not even the Quiet's self 
Some strange day, — or, suppose, grow into it 
As grubs grow butterflies : else, here are we, 
And there is He, and nowhere help at all. 

'Believeth with the life the pain shall stop. 250 

His dam held different, that after death 

He both plagued enemies and feasted friends : 

Idly ! He doth His worst in this our life, 

Giving just respite lest we die thro' pain, 

Saving last pain for worst, — with which, an end. 



166 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire 

Is, not to seem too happy. 'Sees, himself, 

Yonder two flies, with purple films and pink, 

Bask on the pompion-bell above : kills both. 

'Sees two black painful beetles roll their ball 260 

On head and tail as if to save their lives : 

^Moves them the stick away they strive to clear. 

Even so, 'would have him misconceive, suppose 
This Caliban strives hard and ails no less, 
And always, above all else, envies Him ; 
Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights. 
Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh. 
And never speaks his mind save housed as now : 
Outside, 'groans, curses. If He caught me here, 
O'erheard this speech, and asked ^^What chucklest 
at?" 270 

'Would to appease Him, cut a finger off. 
Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best, 
Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree. 
Or push my tame beast for the ore to taste : 
While myself lit a fire, and made a song 
And sung it, " What I hate, he consecrate 
To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate 
For Thee; what see for envy in poor ine V^ 



CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS 167 

Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend, 
Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime, 280 
That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch 
And conquer Setebos, or likelier He 
Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die. 

[What, what ? A curtain o'er the world at once ! 
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird — or, yes, 
There scuds His raven, that hath told Him all ! 
It was fooPs play, this prattling ! Ha ! The wind 
Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move, 
And fast invading fires begin ! White blaze — 
A tree's head snaps — and there, there, there, there, 
there, 290 

His thunder follows ! Fool to gibe at Him ! 
So ! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos ! 
'Maketh his teeth meet thro' his upper lip. 
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month 
One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape !] 



168 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 



"CHILDE EOLAND TO THE DAEK TOWEK 
CAME '' 

{See Edgar's song in ''Lear.'') 

My first thought was, he lied in every word, 
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye 
Askance to watch the working of his lie 
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford 
Suppression^ of the glee, that pursed and scored 
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. 

What else should he be set for, with his staff ? 
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare 
All travellers who might find him posted there, 
And ask the road ? I guessed what skull-like laugh km 
Would break, what crutch 'gin write° my epitaph 
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, 

If at his counsel I should turn aside 

Into that ominous tract which, all agree, 
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly 

I did turn as he pointed : neither pride 

Kor hope rekindling at the end descried. 

So much as gladness that some end might be. 



'' CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME'' 169 

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, 
What with my search drawn out thro' years, my 
hope 20 

Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope 

With that obstreperous joy success would bring, — 

I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring 
My heart made, finding failure in its scope. 

As when a sick man very near to death 

Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end 
The tears, and takes the farewell of each friend, 
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath 
Freelier outside, (" since all is o'er,'' he saith, 

" And the blow fallen no grieving can amend ; ") 30 

While some discuss if near the other graves 
Be room enough for this, and when a day 
Suits best for carrying the corpse away, 
With care about the banners, scarves, and staves : 
And still the man hears all, and only craves 
He may not shame such tender love and stay. 

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest, 
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ 
So many times among " The Band " — to wit. 

The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed 40 



170 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Their steps — that just to fail as they, seemed best, 
And all the doubt was now — should I be fit ? 

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him, 
That hateful cripple, out of his highway 
Into the path he pointed. All the day 
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim 
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim 
Eed leer to see the plain catch its estray.° 

For mark ! no sooner was I fairly found 

Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, 50 

Than, pausing to throw backward a last view 
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone ; gray plain all round : 
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. 
I might go on ; naught else remained to do. 

So, on I went. I think I never saw 

Such starved ignoble nature ; nothing throve : 
For flowers — as well expect a cedar grove ! 
But cockle, spurge, according to their law 
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe. 

You'd think ; a burr had been a treasure trove. 60 

No ! penury, inertness, and grimace. 

In some strange sort, were the land's portion. " See 
Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly, 



^'CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DAHK TOWER CAME'' 171 

" It nothing skills : I cannot help my case : 
'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place, 
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners^ free." 

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk 

Above its mates, the head was chopped ; the bents° 
Were jealous else. What made those holes and 
rents 
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as° to balk 70 
All hope of greenness ? 'tis a brute must walk 
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. 

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair 

In leprosy ; thin dry blades pricked the mud 
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. 

One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, 

Stood stupefied, however he came there : 

Thrust out past service from the devil's stud ! 

Alive ? he might be dead for aught I know. 

With that red gaunt and coiloped neck a-strain^ 8a 
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane ; 

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe ; 

I never saw a brute I hated so ; 

He must be wicked to deserve such pain. 



172 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart. 
As a man calls for wine before he fights, 
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, 

Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. 

Think first, fight afterwards — the soldier's art: 

One taste of the old time sets all to rights. 90 

Not it° ! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face 
Beneath its garniture of curly gold. 
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold 
An arm in mine to fix me to the place. 
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace ! 
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold. 

Giles then, the soul of honour — there he stands 
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. 
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. 

Good — but the scene shifts — faugh! what hangman 
hands 100 

Pin to his breast a parchment ? His own bands 
Eead it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst ! 

Better this present than a past like that ; 
Back therefore to my darkening path again ! 
No sound, no sight so far as eye could strain. 



''CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME'' 173 

Will the night send a howlet° or a bat ? 

I asked : when something on the dismal flat 

Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. 

A sudden little river crossed my path 

As unexpected as a serpent comes. no 

IsTo sluggish tide congenial to the glooms ; 
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath 
For the fiend's glowing hoof — to see the wrath 
Of its black eddy bespate° with flakes and spumes. 

So petty, yet so spiteful ! All along, 

Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it ; 
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit 
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng : 
The river which had done them all the wrong, 

Whatever that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. 12a 

Which, while I forded, — good saints, how I feared 
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek. 
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek 

For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard ! 

— It may have been a water-rat I speared, 
But, ugh ! it sounded like a baby's shriek. 



174 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Glad was I when I reached the other bank. 

Now for a better country. Vain presage ! 

Who were the strngglers, what war did they wage 
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 
Soil to a plash ? Toads in a poisoned tank, 

Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage — 

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. ° 
What penned them there, with all the plain to 

choose ? 
No foot-print leading to that horrid mevvrs, 
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work 
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk° 
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. 

And more than that — a furlong on — why, there ! 
What bad use was that engine" for, that wheel, 140 
Or brake, not wheel — that harrow fit to reel 

Men^s bodies out like silk ? with all the air 

Of Tophet's° tool, on earth left unaware. 

Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. 

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood. 
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth 
Desperate and done with ; (so a fool finds mirth, 



"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME " 175 

Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood 
Changes, and off he goes !) within a rood - — 

Bog, clay, and rubble, sand, and stark black 
dearth. 150 

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim, 
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's 
Broke into moss or substances like boils ; 
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him 
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim 
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. 

And just as far as ever from the end, 

Naught in the distance but the evening, naught 
To point my footstep further ! At the thought, 
A great black bird, Apollyon's° bosom-friend, 160 

Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned 
That brushed my cap — perchance the guide I 
sought. 

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 

'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place 

All round to mountains — with such name to grace 

Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. 

How thus they had surprised me, — solve it, you ! 
How to get from them was no clearer case. 



176 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick 

Of mischief happened to me, Gods knows when — 170 
In a bad dream, perhaps. Here ended, then, 
Progress this way. When, in the very nick 
Of giving up, one time more, came a click 

As when a trap shuts — you're inside the den. 

Burningly it came on me all at once. 

This was the place ! those two hills on the right, 
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight. 

While, to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce, 

Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, 

After a life spent training for the sight ! 180 

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself ? 

The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, 
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart 
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf 
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf 
He strikes on, only when the timbers start. 

Not see? because of night perhaps ? — why, day 
Came back again for that ! before it left. 
The dying sunset kindled thro' a cleft : 

The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, 190 



AN EPISTLE 111 

Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, 

" iSTow stab and end the creature — to the heft ! '^ 

Not hear ? when noise was everywhere ! it tolled 
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears, 
Of all the lost adventurers my peers, — 

How such a one was strong, and such was bold. 

And such was fortunate, yet each of old 

Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years. 

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met 
To view the last of me, a living frame 200 

For one more picture ! in a sheet of flame 

I saw them and I knew them all. And yet 

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set. 

And blew. " Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.^^ 



AN EPISTLE 

CoNTAIlsriNG THE StrANGE MedICAL EXPERIENCE OF 

Karshish, the Arab Physician 

Karshish, the picker up of learning's crumbs, 
The not incurious in God's handiwork 
(This man's flesh he hath admirably made, 



178 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, 

To coop up and keep down on earth a space 

That puff of vapour from his mouth, man's soul) 

— To Abib, all sagacious in our art, 

Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast. 

Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks 

Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, lo 

Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip 

Back and rejoin its source before the term, — 

And aptest in contrivance (under God) 

To baffle it by deftly stopping such° — 

The vagrant Scholar to his Sage° at home 

Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace) 

Three samples of true snake-stone° — rarer still, 

One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, 

(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms ° than drugs) 

And writeth now the twenty-second time. 20 

My journeyings were brought to Jericho: 
Thus I resume. Who studious in our art 
Shall count a little labour unrepaid ? 
I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone 
On many a flinty furlong of this land. 
Also, the country-side is all on fire 
With rumours of a marching hither ward : 



AN EPISTLE 179 

Some say Vespasian^ cometh, some, his son. 

A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear : 

Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls: 30 

I cried and threw my staff and he was gone. 

Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me, 

And once a town declared m e for a spy ° ; 

But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, 

Since this poor covert where I pass the night, 

This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence 

A man with plague-sores at the third degree 

Runs till he drops down dead.° Thou laughest here ! 

'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe, 

To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip 40 

And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. 

A viscid choler is observable 

In tertians, I was nearly bold to say ; 

And falling-sickness hath a happier cure° 

Than our school wots of: there's a spider here 

Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs, 

Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back ; 

Take five and drop them° . . . but who knows his mind. 

The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to ? 

His service payeth me a sublimate 50 

Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. 

Best wait : I reach Jerusalem at morn, 



180 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

There set in order my experiences, 

Gather what most deserves, and give thee all — 

Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanth 

Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, 

Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry, 

In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease 

Confounds me, crossing so v^ith leprosy : 

Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar — 60 

But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end. 

Yet stay ! my Syrian blinketh gratefully, 
Protesteth his devotion is my price — 
Suppose I write what harms not, tho' he steal ? 
I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,° 
What set me off a-writing first of all. 
An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang ! 
Por, be it this town's barrenness — or else 
The man had something in the look of him — 
His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth. 70 
So, pardon if — (lest presently I lose, 
In the great press of novelty at hand, 
The care and pains this somehow stole from me) 
I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind, 
Almost in sight — for, wilt thou have the truth ? 
The very man is gone from me but now, 



AN, EPISTLE 181 

Whose ailment is the subject of discourse. 
Thus then, and let thy better wit help all ! 

'Tis but a case of mania : subinduced 
By epilepsy, at the turning-point 80 

Of trance prolonged unduly some three days 
When, by the exhibition of some drug 
Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art 
Unknown to me and which ^twere well to know, 
The evil thing, out-breaking all at once, 
Left the man whole and sound of body indeed, — 
But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide, 
Making a clear house of it too suddenly. 
The first conceit that entered might inscribe 
Whatever it was minded on the wall 90 

So plainly at that vantage, as it were, 
(First come, first served) that nothing subsequent 
Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls 
The just-returned and new-established soul 
Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart 
That henceforth she will read or these or none. 
And first — the man's own firm conviction rests 
That he was dead (in fact they buried him) 
— That he was dead and then restored to life 
By a ]^azarene physician of his tribe : 100 



182 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

— 'Sayeth, the same bade " Else/' and he did rise. 

" Such cases are diurnal/' thou wilt cry. 

Not so this figment ! — not, that such a fume, 

Instead of giving way to time and health, 

Should eat itself into the life of life, 

As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones, and all ! 

For see, how he takes up the after-life. 

The man — it is one Lazarus, a Jew, 

Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age, 

The body's habit wholly laudable. 

As much, indeed, beyond the common health 

As he were made and put aside to show. 

Think, could we penetrate by any drug 

And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh, 

And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep ! 

Whence has the man the balm that brightens all ? 

This grown man eyes the world now like a child. 

Some elders of his tribe, I should premise, 

Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep, 

To bear my inquisition. While they spoke, 

Now sharply, now with sorrow, — told the case, — 

He listened not except I spoke to him. 

But folded his two hands and let them talk. 

Watching the flies that buzzed : and yet no fool. 

And that's a sample how his years must go. 



AN EPISTLE 183 

Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life, 

Should find a treasure, — can he use the same 

With straitened habits and with tastes starved small. 

And take at once to his impoverished brain 

The sudden element that changes things, 130 

That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand. 

And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust ? 

Is he not such an one as moves to mirth — 

Warily parsimonious, when no need. 

Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times ? 

All prudent counsel as to what befits 

The golden mean, is lost on such an one : 

The man's fantastic will is the man's law. 

So here — we call the treasure knowledge, say, 

Increased beyond the fleshly faculty — 140 

Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth. 

Earth forced on a souFs use while seeing heaven : 

The man is witless of the size, the sum. 

The value in proportion of all things. 

Or whether it be little or be much. 

Discourse to him of prodigious armaments 

Assembled to besiege his city now. 

And of the passing of a mule with gourds — 

'Tis one ! Then take it on the other side. 

Speak of some trifling fact, — he will gaze rapt 150 



184 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNIXG 

With stupor at its very littleness, 

(Far as I see) as if in that indeed 

He caught prodigious import, whole results ; 

And so will turn to us the bystanders 

In ever the same stupor (note this point) 

That we too see not with his opened eyes. 

Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, 

Preposterously, at cross purposes. 

Should his child sicken unto death, — why, look 

For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, i6a 

Or pretermission of the daily craft ! 

While a word, gesture, glance from that same child 

At play or in the school or laid asleep, 

W^ill startle him to an agony of fear, 

Exasperation, just as like. Demand 

The reason why — "^tis but a word,'' object — 

" A gesture '' — he regards thee as our lord 

Who lived there in the pyramid alone, 

Looked at us (dost thou mind ?) when, being young 

We both would unadvisedly recite 170 

Some charm's beginning, from that book of his,° 

Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst 

All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. 

Thou and the child have each a veil alike 

Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both ... 



AN EPISTLE 185 

Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match 

Over a mine of Greek fire,° did ye know ! 

He holds on firmly to some thread of life 

(It is the life to lead perforcedly) 

Which runs across some vast distracting orb i8o 

Of glory on either side that meagre thread, 

Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet — 

The spiritual life around the earthly life : 

The law of that is known to him as this, 

His heart and brain move here, his feet stay here. 

So is the man perplext with impulses 

Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on. 

Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, 

And not along, this black thread thro' the blaze — 

" It should be '' balked by " here it cannot be." 190 

And oft the man's soul springs into his face 

As if he saw again and heard again 

His sage that bade him " Else " and he did rise. 

Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within 

Admonishes: then back he sinks at once 

To ashes, who was very fire before. 

In sedulous recurrence to his trade 

Whereby he earneth him the daily bread ; 

And studiously the humbler for that pride. 

Professedly the faultier that he knows 200 



186 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. 

Indeed the especial marking of the man 

Is prone submission to the heavenly will — 

Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 

'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last 

For that same death which must restore his being 

To equilibrium, body loosening soul 

Divorced even now by premature full growth : 

He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live 

So long as God please, and just how God please. 

He even seeketh not to please God more 

(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. 

Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach 

The doctrine of his sect whatever it be. 

Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do : 

How can he give his neighbour the real ground, 

His own conviction ? Ardent as he is — 

Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old 

" Be it as God please '' reassureth him. 

I probed the sore as thy disciple should : 

" How, beast,'' said I, " this stolid carelessness 

Sufficeth thee, when Eome is on her march 

To stamp out like a little spark thy town. 

Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once ? " 

He merely looked with his large eyes on me. 



AN EPISTLE 187 

The man is apathetic, you deduce ? 

Contrariwise, he loves both old and young, 

Able and weak, affects the very brutes 

And birds — how say I ? flowers of the field — 

As a wise workman recognizes tools 230 

In a master's workshop, loving what they make. 

Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb : 

Only impatient, let him do his best. 

At ignorance and carelessness and sin — 

An indignation which is promptly curbed : 

As when in certain travel I have feigned 

To be an ignoramus in our art 

According to some preconceived design, 

And happed to hear the land's practitioners 

Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240 

Prattle fantastically on disease, 

Its cause and cure — and I must hold my peace ! 

Thou wilt object — Why have I not ere this 
Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene 
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source, 
Conferring with the frankness that befits ? 
Alas ! it grieveth me, the learned leech 
Perished in a tumult many years ago. 
Accused — our learning's fate — of wizardry, 



188 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Eebellion, to the setting up a rule 250 

And creed prodigious as described to me. 
' His death, which happened when the earthquake fell 
(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss 
To occult learning in our lord the sage 
Who lived there in the pyramid alone°), 
Was wrought by the mad people — that's their wont ! 
On vain recourse, as I conjecture it. 
To his tried virtue, for miraculous help — 
How could he stop the earthquake ? That's their 

way ! 
The other imputations must be lies : 260 
But take one, tho' I loathe to give it thee. 
In mere respect for any good man's fame. 
(And after all, our patient Lazarus 
Is stark mad ; should we count on what he says ? 
Perhaps not : tho' in writing to a leech 
'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.) 
This man so cured regards the curer, then. 
As — God forgive me ! who but God Himself, 
Creator and sustainer of the world,° 
That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile. 270 
— 'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived, 
Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, 
Then died, with Lazarus by, foi: aught I know, 



'AN EPISTLE 189 

And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat, 

And must have so avouched himself, in fact, 

In hearing of this very Lazarus 

Who saith — but why all this of what he saith ? 

Why write of trivial matters, things of price 

Calling at every moment for remark ? 

I noticed on the margin of a pool 280 

Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, 

Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange ! 

Thy pardon for this long and tedious case, 
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem 
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth ! 
Nor I myself discern in what is writ 
Good cause for the peculiar interest 
And awe indeed this man has touched me with. 
Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness 
Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus : 290 

I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills 
Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came 
A moon made like a face with certain spots 
Multiform, manifold, and menacing : 
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met 
In this old sleepy town at unaware. 
The man and I. I send thee what is writ. 



190 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Regard it as a chance^ a matter risked 

To this ambiguous Syrian : lie may lose, 

Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. 300 

Jerusalem's repose shall make amends 

For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine ; 

Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell ! 

The very God ! think, Abib ; dost thou think ? 
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too — 
So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, " heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
Eace, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! 
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine, 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 310 

And thou must love me who have died for thee ! " 
The madman saith He said so ; it is strange. 



SAUL 



Said Abner, ^* At last thou art come ! Ere I tell, ere 

thou speak. 
Kiss my cheek, wish me well ! ^' Then I wished it, 

and did kiss his cheek. 



SAUL 191 

And he, " Since the King, my friend, for thy coun- 
tenance sent, 

Neither drunken nor eaten have we ; nor until from 
his tent 

Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth 

yet. 

Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water 

be wet. 
For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three 

days, 
Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer 

nor of praise. 
To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their 

strife. 
And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks 

back upon life. lo 

II 

" Yet now my heart leaps, beloved ! God's child 

with his dew 
On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living 

and blue 
Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no 

wild heat 
Were now raging to torture the desert ! " 



192 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

III 

Then I, as was meet, 
Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my 

feet, 
And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was 

unlooped ; 
I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I 

stooped ; 
Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all 

withered and gone, 
That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my 

way on 
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once 

more I prayed, 20 

And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not 

afraid 
But spoke, ^^Here is David, thy servant!" And no 

voice replied. • 
At the first I saw naught but the blackness ; but soon 

I descried 
A something more black than the blackness — the vast, 

the upright 
Main prop which sustains the pavilion : and slow into 

sight 
Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all. 



SAUL 193 

Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent roof, showed 
Saul. 

He stood erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched 

out wide 
On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to 

each side ; 
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in 

his pangs 30 

And waiting his change, the king serpent all heavily 

hangs, 
Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance 

come 
With the spring-time, — so agonized Saul, drear and 

stark, blind and dumb. 



Then I tuned my harp, — took off the lilies we twine 

round its chords 
Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide — 

those sunbeams like swords ! 
And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, 

one after one. 
So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done. 



194 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they 

have fed 
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the 

stream's bed ; 
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star 

follows star 40 

Into eve and the blue far above us, — so blue and so 

far! 

VI 

— Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland 

will each leave his mate 
To fly after the player ; then, what makes the crickets 

elate 
Till for boldness they fight one another: and then, 

what has weight 
To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand 

house — 
There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and 

half mouse ! 
God made all the creatures and gave them our love 

and our fear. 
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family 

here. 



SAUL 195 

VII 

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine- 
song, when hand 

Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and 
great hearts expand 50 

And grow one in the sense of this world's life. — And 
then, the last song 

When the dead man is praised on his journey — "Bear, 
bear him along 

With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets ! '' Are 
balm-seeds not here 

To console us ? The land has none left such as he on 
the bier. 

" Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother ! " — And 
then, the glad chaunt 

Of the marriage, — first go the young maidens, next, 
she whom we vaunt 

As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling. — And then, 
the great march 

Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress 
an arch 

Naught can break ; who shall hajm them, our friends ? 
— Then, the chorus intoned 

As the Levites go up to the altar in glory en- 
throned. 60 



196 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

But I stopped here : for here in the darkness Saul 
groaned. 

VIII 

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and 

listened apart ; 
And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered : and 

sparkles 'gan dart 
From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once with 

a start 
All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at 

heart. 
So the head : but the body still moved not, still hung 

there erect. 
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it 

unchecked, 
As I sang, — 

IX 

" Oh, our manhood's prime vigor ! No 

spirit feels waste, 
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew 

unbraced. 
Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock up 

to rock, 70 



SAUL 197 

The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the 

cool silver shock 
Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the 

bear, 
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his 

lair. 
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold- 
dust divine. 
And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full 

draught of wine. 
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where 

bulrushes tell 
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and 

well. 
How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to 

employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy ! 
Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose 

sword thou didst guard 80 

When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for 

glorious reward ? 
Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up 

as men sung 
The low song of the nearly departed, and hear her 

faint tongue 



198 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Joining in while it could to the witness, ' Let one more 

attest, 
I have lived, seen God's hand thro' a lifetime, and all 

was for best ! ' 
Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph, 

not much, but the rest. 
And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the work- 
ing whence grew 
Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit 

strained true: 
And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood of 

■ wonder and hope. 
Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the 

eye's scope,— 90 

Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch ; a people is thine : 
And all gifts which the world offers singly, on one 

head combine ! 
On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and 

rage (like the throe 
That, a-work in the rock, helps its labour and lets the 

gold go). 
High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame 

crowning them, — all 
Brought to blaze on the head of one creature — King 

Saul ! " 



SAUL 199 

X 

And lo, with that leap of my spirit, — heart, hand, 

harp, and voice. 
Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding 

rejoice 
SauPs fame in the light it was made for — as when, 

dare I say. 
The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains thro' 

its array, loo 

And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot — ^^Saul!" cried 

I, and stopped. 
And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, 

who hung propped 
By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck 

by his name. 
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes 

right to the aim, 
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that 

held (he alone. 
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a 

broad bust of stone 
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, — leaves 

grasp of the sheet ? 
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down 

to his feet, 



200 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your 

mountain of old, 
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages 

untold: no 

Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each fur- 
row and scar 
Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest — all 

hail, there they are ! 
— Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold 

the nest 
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green 

on his crest 
For their food in the ardours of summer. One long 

shudder thrilled 
All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and 

was stilled 
At the King's self left standing before me, released 

and aware. 
What was gone, what remained ? All to traverse 

'twixt hope and despair. 
Death was past, life not come : so he waited. Awhile 

his right hand 
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant, forth- 
with to remand 120 
To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas 

Saul as before. 



SAUL 201 

I looked upj and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was 

hurt any more 
Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from 

the shore, 
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean — a sun's slow 

decline 
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and 

entwine 
Base with base to knit strength more intensely : so, 

arm folded arm 
O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided. 



XI 

What spell or what charm, 

(For, awhile there was trouble within me) what next 
should I urge 

To sustain him where song had restored him ? Song 
filled to the verge 

His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it 
yields 130 

Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: be- 
yond, on what fields 

Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten 
the eye. 



202 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the 

cup they put by ? 
He saith, "It is good;" still he drinks not: he lets 

me praise life, 
Gives assent, yet would die for his own part. 



XII 

Then fancies grew rife 
Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round 

me the sheep 
Fed in silence — above, the one eagle wheeled slow as 

in sleep ; 
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that 

might lie 
'Neath his ken, tho' I saw but the strip ^twixt the hill 

and the sky : 
And I laughed — " Since my days are ordained to be 

passed with my flocks, 140 

Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains 

and the rocks. 
Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the 

show 
Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly 

shall know ! 



SAUL 203 

Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the cour- 
age that gains, 

And the prudence that keeps what men strive for ! ^' 
And now these old trains 

Of vague thought came again ; I grew surer ; so, once 
more the string 

Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus — 



XIII 

" Yea, my King,^' 
I began — ^^thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts 

that spring 
From the mere mortal life held in common by man 

and by brute : 
In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul 

it bears fruit. 150 

Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, — how its 

stem trembled first 
Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then 

safely outburst 
The fan-branches all round ; and thou mindest when 

these too, in turn 
Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect : yet 

more was to learn. 



204 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our 

dates shall we slight. 
When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow ? or care 

for the plight 
Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them ? 

Not so ! stem and branch 
Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the 

palm- wine shall staunch 
Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee 

such wine. 
Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for ! the spirit be 

thine ! i6o 

By the spirit, when age shall overcome thee, thou still 

shalt enjoy 
More indeed, than at first when, inconscious, the life 

of a boy. 
Crush that life, and behold its wine running ! Each 

deed thou hast done 
Dies, revives, goes to work in the world ; until e'en as 

the sun 
Looking down on the earth, tho' clouds spoil him, tho' 

tempests efface. 
Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must 

everywhere trace 
The results of his past summer-prime, — so, each ray 

of thy will. 



SAUL 205 

Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, 

shall thrill 
Thy whole people, the countless, with ardour, till they 

too give forth 
A like cheer to their sons : who in turn, fill the South 

and the ISTorth 170 

With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse 

in the past ! 
But the license of age has its limit ; thou diest at last. 
As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her 

height, 
So with man — so his power and his beauty forever 

take flight. 
ISTo ! Again a long draught of my soul-wine ! Look 

forth o'er the years ! 
Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual ; begin 

with the seer's! 
Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his 

tomb — bid arise 
A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, 

built to the skies, 
Let it mark where the great First King slumbers : 

whose fame would ye know? 
Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record 

shall go 180 



206 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

In great characters cut by the scribe, — Such was Saul, 

so he did ; 
With the sages directing the work, by the populace 

chid, — 
Eor not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there ! Which 

fault to amend. 
In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon 

they shall spend 
(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and 

record 
■ With the gold of the graver, SauPs story, — the states- 
man's great word 
Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The 

river's a-wave 
With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when 

prophet-winds rave : 
So the pen gives unborn generations their due and 

their part 
In thy being ! Then, first of the mighty, thank God 

that thou art ! " 190 

XIV 

And behold while I sang . . . but Thou who didst 

grant me that day, 
And before it not seldom has granted Thy help to essay, 



SAUL 207 

Carry on and complete an adventure, — my shield and 

my sword 
In that act where my soul was Thy servant, Thy word 

was my word, — 
Still be with me, who then at the summit of human 

endeavour 
And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed 

hopeless as ever 
On the new stretch of heaven above me — till, mighty 

to save, 
Just one lift of Thy hand cleared that distance — God's 

throne from man's grave ! 
Let me tell out my tale to its ending — my voice to my 

heart 
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last 

night I took part, 200 

As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with 

my sheep. 
And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like 

sleep ! 
For I wake in the gray dewy covert, while Hebron 

upheaves 
The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and 

Kidron retrieves 
Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine. 



208 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

XV 

I say then, — my song 
While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and, ever 

more strong, 
Made a proffer of good to console him — he slowly 
, resumed 
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right 

hand replumed 
His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted 

the swathes 
Of his turban, and see — the huge sweat that his 

countenance bathes, 210 

He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his 

loins as of yore. 
And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp 

set before. 
He is Saul, ye remember in glory, — ere error had bent 
The broad brow from the daily commxunion ; and still, 

tho' much spent 
Be the life and bearing that front you, the same, God 

did choose. 
To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never 

quite lose. 
So sank he along by the tent-prop, till, stayed by the 

pile 



SAUL . 209 

Of his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned 

there awhile, 
And sat out my singing, — one arm round the tent- 
prop, to raise 
His bent head, and the other hung slack — till I 

touched on the praise 220 

I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient 

there ; 
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first 

I was 'ware 
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast 

knees 
Which were thrust out each side around me, like oak 

roots which please 
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to 

know 
If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke 

not, but slow 
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it 

with care 
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow : 

thro' my hair 
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my 

head, with kind power — 229 

All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower. 
p 



210 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scruti- 
nized mine — 

And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where 
was the sign ? 

I yearned — " Could I help thee, my father, inventing 
a bliss, 

I would add, to that life of the past, both the future 
and this ; 

I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages 
hence. 

As this moment, — had love but the warrant, love's 
heart to dispense ! '^ 

XVI 

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more — no 
song more ! outbroke — 

XVII 

^' I have gone the whole round of creation : I saw and 
I spoke ; 

I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in 
my brain 

And pronounced on the rest of his handwork — re- 
turned him again 240 



SAUL 211 

His creation's approval or censure : I spoke as I saw, 
Eeported, as man may of God's work — all 's love, yet 

all 's law. 
Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each 

faculty tasked 
To perceive him has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop 

was asked. 
Have I knowledge ? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom 

laid bare. 
Have I forethought ? how purblind, how blank, to the 

Infinite Care ! 
Do I task any faculty highest, to image success ? 
I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and no 

less, 
In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is 

seen God 
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and 

the clod. 250 

And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew 
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises 

it too) 
The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all 

complete. 
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His 

feet. 



212 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity 
known, 

I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my 
own. 

There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hood- 
wink, 

I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I think), 

Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I 
worst 

E'en the Giver in one gift. — Behold, I could love if I 
durst ! 260 

But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may overtake 

God's own speed in the one way of love ; I abstain for 
love's sake. 

— What, my soul ? see thus far and no farther ? when 
doors great and small, 

ISTine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hun- 
dredth appal ? 

In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the 
greatest of all ? 

Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, 

That I doubt His own love can compete with it ? 
Here, the parts shift ? 

Here, the creature surpass the creator, — the end, what 
began ? 



SAUL 213 

Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this 

man, 
And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who yet 

alone can ? 270 

Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, 

much less power. 
To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous 

dower 
Of the life he was gifted and filled with ? to make such 

a soul. 
Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the 

Avhole ? 
And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears 

attest). 
These good things being given, to go on, and give one 

more, the best ? 
Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at 

the height 
This perfection, — succeed with life's day spring, death's 

minute of night ? 
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mis- 
take, 
Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid him 

awake 280 

From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find 

himself set 



214 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new har- 
mony yet 

To be run and continued, and ended — who knows ? — 
or endure ! 

The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to 
make sure ; 

By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified 
bliss. 

And the next world's reward and repose, by "the strug- 
gles in this. 

XVIII 

"I believe it ! 'Tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who 

receive : 
In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe. 
All's one gift : Thou canst grant it, moreover, as prompt 

to my prayer. 
As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to 

the air. 290 

From Thy will stream the worlds, life and nature. Thy 

dread Sabaoth : 
I will ? — the mere atoms despise me ! Why am I not 

loath 
To look that, even that in the face too ? Why is it I 

dare 



SAUL 215 

Think but lightly of such impuissance ? What stops 
my despair ? 

This ; — 'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but 
what man Would do ! 

See the King — I would help him, but cannot, the 
wishes fall through. 

Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor 
to enrich, 

To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — know- 
ing which, 

I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak thro' 
me now ! 

Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wouldst Thou 
— so wilt Thou ! 300 

So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost 
crown — 

And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor 
down 

One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no 
breath, 

Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue 
with death ! 

As Thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved 

Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Be- 
loved ! 



216 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall 

stand the most weak. 
'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh, 

that I seek 
In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. Saul, it shall 

be 
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to 

me, 310 

Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever : a Hand 

like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See 

the Christ stand ! '' 

XIX 

I know not too well how I found my way home in the 

night. 
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to 

right. 
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the 

aware : 
I repressed, I got thro' them as hardly, as strugglingly 

there. 
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news — 
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell 

loosed with her crews ; 



SAUL 217 

And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled 

and shot 
Oat in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge : but I 

fainted not, 320 

For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, 

suppressed 
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy 

behest. 
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank 

to rest. 
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from 

earth — 
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender 

birth ; 
In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills ; 
In the shuddering forests' held breath ; in the sudden 

wind-thrills ; 
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye 

sidling still 
Though averted with wonder and dread ; in the birds 

stiff and chill 
That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid 

with awe : 330 

E'en the serpent that slid away silent — he felt the 

new law. 



218 SHORTER POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING 

The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by 

the flowers ; 
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved 

the vine-bowers ; 
And the little brooks witnessing murmured^ persistent 

and low, 
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices — " E'en 

so, it is so ! " 



NOTES 



THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN. (Page 1.) 

The poem is based on an old myth found in many forms, all 
turning upon the attempt to cheat a magician out of his prom- 
ised reward. See Brewer's Header^ s Handbook^ Baring- Gould's 
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages^ Grimm's Deutsche Sagen, 
and the Encyclopcedia Britannica. There are Persian and 
Chinese analogues. 

The eldest son of William Macready, the actor, was con- 
fined to the house by illness, and Browning wrote this jeu 
d"^ esprit to amuse the boy and to give him a subject for illus- 
trative drawings. 

Line 1. Hamelin. A town in Hanover, Prussia. 

89. Cham, or Khan. The title of the rulers of Tartary. 

91. Nizam. The title of the sovereign of Hyderabad, the 
principal state of India. 

158. Claret, Moselle, etc. Names of wines. 

179. Caliph. The title given to the successor of Mohammed, 
as head of the Moslem state, and defender of the faith. Cen- 
tury Dictionary. 

219 



220 NOTES 

TRAY. (Page 15.) 

The poem tells in detail an actual incident, and was written 
as a protest against vivisection. 

3. Sir Olaf. A conventional name in romances of mediaeval 
chivalry. 

6. A satire upon Byronism. Manfred and Childe Harold 
are heroes of this type. 

Note the abruptness and vigor of the style. Where does it 
seem effective ? Where unduly harsh ? Why does the poet 
welcome the third bard ? What, things does the poem satirize ? 

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP. (Page 17.) 
The incident is real, except that the actual hero was a man, 
not a boy. 

I. Ratisbon (German Regensburg). A city in Austria, 
stormed by Napoleon in 1809. 

II. Lannes. Duke of Montebello, a general in Napoleon's 
army. 

20. This sentence is incomplete. The idea is begun anew in 
line 23. 

What two ideals are contrasted in Napoleon and the boy ? 
By what means is sympathy turned from one to the other? 
Show how rapidity and vividness are given to the story. 

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT 
TO AIX. (Page 19.) 
Browning thus explains the origin of the poem : " There is 
no sort of historical foundation about Good News from Ghent. 



NOTES 221 

I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel off the African coast, 
after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy 
of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse ' York,' then in 
my stable at home." It would require a skilful imagination to 
create a set of circumstances which could give any other plaus- 
ible reason for the ride to " save Aix from her fate." 

14. Lokeren. Twelve miles from Ghent. 

15. Boom. Sixteen miles from Lokeren. 

16. Duffeld. Twelve miles from Boom. 

17. 19, 31, etc. Mecheln (Fr. Malines), Aershot, Hasselt, 
etc. The reader may trace the direction and length of the ride 
in any large atlas. Minute examinations of the route are, 
however, of no special value. 

Note the rapidity of narration and the galloping movement 
of the verse ; the time of starting, and the anxious attention to 
the time as the journey proceeds. How are we given a sense 
of the effort and distress of the horses ? How do we see Roland 
gradually emerging as the hero ? Where is the climax of the 
story ? Note, especially, the power or beauty of lines 2, 6, 7, 
15, 23, 25, 39, 40, 47, 51-53, 54-56. 

HERVE RIEL. (Page 22.) 

(Published in the Cornhill Magazine, 1871. Browning gave 
the £100 received for the poem to the fund for the relief of 
the people of Paris, who were starving after the siege of 
1870.) 

The cause of James II., who had been removed from the 
English throne in 1688, and succeeded by William and Mary, 



222 NOTES 

was taken up by the French. The story is strictly historical, 
except that Herv^ Kiel asked a holiday for the rest of his life. 

5. St. Male on the Ranee. On the northern coast of France, 
in Brittany. See any large atlas. 

43. pressed. Forced to enter service in the navy. 

44. Croisickese. A native of Croisic, in Brittany. Brown- 
ing has used the legends of Croisic for poetic material in his 
Gold Hair of Pornic and in The Two Poets of Croisic. 

46. Malouins. Inhabitants of St. Malo. 

135. The Louvre. The great palace and art gallery of Paris. 

Note the suggestion of the sea, and of eager hurry, in the 
movement of the verse. Compare the directness of the opening 
with that of the preceding poem : What is the advantage of 
such a beginning ? How much is told of the hero ? By what 
means is his heroism emphasized ? How is Browning's depar- 
ture from the legend a gain ? Observe the abrupt energy of lines 
39-40 ; the repetition in 79-80 ; the picture of Herv^ Kiel in 
stanzas viii and x. 

PHEIDIPPIDES. (Page 30. ) 

The story is from Herodotus, told there in the third person. 
See Herodotus, VI., 105-106. The final incident and the reward 
asked by the runner are Browning's addition. 

Xaipere^ vlkQ/jlcv. Kejoice, we conquer. 

4. Zeus. The chief of the Greek gods (Roman Jupiter). 
Her of the aegis and spear. These were the emblems of 



NOTES 223 

Athena (Roman Minerva), the goddess of wisdom and of 
warfare. 
5. Ye of the bow and the buskin. Apollo and Diana. 

8. Pan. The god of nature, of the fields and their fruits. 

9. Archons. Rulers, tettix, the grasshopper, whose image 
symbolized old age, and was worn by the senators of Athens. 
See the myth of Tithonus and Tennyson's poem of that name. 

13. Persia attempted a conquest of Athens in 490 b.c. and 
was defeated by the Athenians in the famous battle of Mara- 
thon, under Miltiades. 

18. To bring earth and water to an invading enemy was a 
symbol of submission. 

19. Eretria. A city on the island of Euboea, twenty-nine 
miles north of Athens. 

20. Hellas. The Greek name for Greece. 

21. The Greeks of the various provinces long regarded them- 
selves as of one blood and quality, superior to the outer bar- 
barians. 

82. Phoibos, or Phoebus. Apollo, god of the sun and the arts. 
Artemis (Roman Diana), goddess of the moon and patroness of 
hunting. 

33. Olumpos. Olympus. A mountain of Greece which was 
the abode of Zeus and the other gods. 

52. Parnes. A mountain on the ridge between Attica and 
Boeotia, now called Ozia. 

62. Erebos. The lower world ; the place of night and the 
dead. 



224 NOTES 

89. Miltiades (?-489 B.C.). The Greek general who won the 
victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 b.c. 

106. Akropolis. The citadel of Athens, where stood the 
court of justice and the temple of the goddess Athene. 

109. Fennel-field. The Greek name for fennel was 6 MapaOJou 
(Marathon). Hence the prophetic significance of Pan's gift to 
the runner. 

Compare the story in Herodotus (YI., 105-106) with Brown- 
ing's more spirited and poetic version. Observe how the strong 
patriotism, the Greek love of nature, and the Greek reverence 
for the gods are brought to the fore. What imagery in the 
poem is especially effective ? What is the claim of Pheidippides 
— as Browning presents him — to memory as a hero ? What 
ideals are most prominent in the poem? 

MY STAR. (Page 40.) 

4. angled spar. The Iceland spar has the power of polariz- 
ing light and producing great richness and variety of color. 

11. Saturn. The planet next beyond Jupiter ; here chosen, 
perhaps, for its changing aspects. See an encyclopaedia or dic- 
tionary. 

This dainty love lyric is said to have been written with Mrs. 
Browning in mind. It needs, however, no such narrow applica- 
tion for its interpretation. It is the simple declaration of the 
lover that the loved one reveals to him qualities of soul not 
revealed to others. Observe the "order of lyric progress" in 
speaking first of nature, then of the feelings. 



NOTES 226 

EVELYN HOPE. (Page 41.) 
The lover denies the evanescence of human love. He hnplies 
that in some future time the love will reappear and be re- 
warded. Browning's optimism lays hold sometimes of the 
present, sometimes of the future, for the fulfilment of its hope. 
Especially strong is his "sense of the continuity of life." 
"There shall never be one lost good," he makes Abt Yogier 
say. The charm of this poem is more, perhaps, in its tender- 
ness of tone and purity of atmosphere than in its doctrine of 
optimism. 

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS. (Page 43.) 
This poem was written in Rome in the winter of 1853-1854. 
The scene is the Roman Campagna. The verse has a softness 
and a melody unusual in Browning. Compare its structure 
with that of Holmes's The Last Leaf. Note the elements of 
pastoral peace and gentleness in the opening, and in the color- 
ing of the scene. What two scenes are brought into contrast ? 
Note how the scenes alternate throughout the poem, and how 
each scene is gradually developed according to the ordinary laws 
of description. What ideals are thus compared? What does 
the poem mean ? 

MISCONCEPTIONS. (Page 47.) 
11. Dalmatic. A robe worn by mediaeval kings on solemn 
occasions, and still worn by deacons at the mass in the Roman 
Catholic church. 

The lyric order appears sharply developed here in the paral- 
lelism of the two stanzas. Point out this parallelism of idea. 
Q 



226 NOTES 

Does it fail at any point ? Note the chivalrous absence of re- 
proach by the lover. Observe the climax up to which each 
stanza leads, and the climax within the last line of each stanza. 

NATURAL MAGIC. (Page 48.) 

5. Nautch. An Indian dancing-girl, to whom Browning 
ascribes the skill of a magician. 

The poem celebrates the transforming and life-giving power 
of affection. Note the abrupt and excited manner of utter- 
ance, and how the speaker begins in the midst of things. He 
has already told his story once, when the poem opens. Note 
also the parallelism of structure, as in Misconceptions^ the 
climax in each stanza, and the echo in the last line of each. 
Tell the story in the common order of prose narrative. 

APPARITIONS. (Page 49.) 

Study the development of the idea in the same manner as 
in Misconceptions and Natural Magic. Note the felicity of 
imagery and diction. 

A WALL. (Page 60.) 

The clew to the meaning is to be sought in the last two 
stanzas. This is one of the best examples of Browning's 
"assertion of the soul in song." 

CONFESSIONS. (Page 51.) 

First construct the scene of the poem. What has the priest 
said ? What is the sick man's answer ? What evidence is 



NOTES 227 

there that his imagination is struggling to recall the old mem- 
ory ? What view of life does the priest offer, and he reject ? 
Does Browning indicate his preference for either view, or tell 
the story impartially ? 

A WOMAN'S LAST WORD. (Page 53.) 

What key to the situation in the first line ? Who are the 
speaker and the one addressed ? What mood and feeling are in 
control ? Comment upon the condensation of the thought and 
the movement of the verse. 

A PRETTY WOMAN. (Page 55.) 
26-27. Compare Emerson's lines in The Bhodora : — 

*' If eyes were made for seeing, 
Then beauty is its own excuse for being." 

To what things is the ''Pretty Woman" compared? Of 
what use is she ? How is she to be judged ? 

YOUTH AND ART. (Page 58.) 

8. Gibson, John (1790-1866). A famous sculptor. 

12. Grisi, Giulia. A celebrated singer (1811-1869). 

18. In allusion to the asceticism of the Hindoo religious 
devotees. 

58. bals-pares. Fancy-dress balls. 

The poem is half -humorous, half-serious. The speaker, in 
her imaginary conversation, gives her own history and that of 



228 NOTES 

the man she thinks she might have loved. The story is on the 
"Maud MuUer" motive, but with less of sentimentality. The 
setting suggests the life of art students in Paris, or in some 
Italian city. The poem is a plea for the freedom of the indi- 
viduality of a soul against the restrictions imposed by conven- 
tional standards of value. Its touches of humor, of human 
nature, and its summary of two lives in brief, are admirably " 
done. Its rhymes sometimes need the indulgence accorded to 
humorous writing. 

A TALE. (Page 61.) 

The source of the story is an epigram given in Mackail's 
Select Epigrams from Greek Anthology. It is one of the hap- 
piest pieces of Browning's lighter work. 

65. Lotte, or Charlotte. A character in Goethe's Sorrows 
of Werther, said to be drawn from the heroine of one of Goethe's 
earlier love-affairs. 

Who are the speaker and the one addressed ? Whom does 
the cicada of the tale symbolize ? Whom the singer helped by 
the cicada ? What application is made of the story ? What 
serious meanings and feelings underlie the tone of raillery ? 
What things mark the light and humorous tone of the speaker ? 
Point out the harmony between style and theme. 

SONGS PROM PIPPA PASSES. (Page 67.) 

The drama of Pippa Passes is a succession of scenes, each 

representing some crisis of human life, into which breaks, with 

beneficent influence, a song of the girl Felippa, or " Pippa," on 

her holiday from the silk-mills. She is unconscious of the influ- 



NOTES 229 

ence she exerts. William Sharp says these songs "are as 
pathetically fresh and free as a thrush's song in a beleaguered 
city, and with the same unconsidered magic. ' ' 

THE LOST LEADER. (Page 69.) 

The desertion of the liberal cause by Wordsworth, Southey, 
and others, is the germinal idea of this poem. But Browning 
always strenuously insisted that the resemblance went no fur- 
ther ; that The Lost Leader is no true portrait of Wordsworth, 
though he became poet-laureate. The Lost Leader is a purely 
ideal conception, developed by the process of idealization from 
an individual who serves as a "lay figure." 

13. Shakespeare was more of an aristocrat, surely, than a 
democrat. Milton had championed the cause of liberty in prose 
and poetry, and had worked for it as Cromwell's Latin secre- 
tary. 

14. Burns, Shelley. What poems can you cite of either poet 
to place him in this list ? 

Who is the speaker ? What is the cause ? Why does he not 
wish the "lost leader" to return? How does he judge him? 
What does he expect for his cause ? What does he mean by 
lines 29-30 ? lines 31-32 ? Point out the climax in the second 
stanza, 

APPARENT FAILURE. (Page 71.) 
3. your Prince. Son of Napoleon III., born in March, 1856. 
7. The Congress assembled to discuss Italy's unity and free- 
dom. Gortschakoff represented Russia ; Count Cavour, Italy ; 



230 NOTES 

Buol, Austria. Austria had conquered Italy. See Browning's 
The Italian in England. 

12. Petrarch's Vaucluse. The fountain from whicli the 
Sorgue rises. The town of Vaucluse (Valclusa) was the home 
of the poet Petrarch (1304-1374). 

14. debt. The obligation to visit a famous place. 

39. Tuileries. The imperial palace in Paris. 

43-44. What is meant ? Death ? Freedom ? 

46-47. In allusion to the game of rouge-et-noir. Criticise 
the taste shown here. 

In what sense does the poet intend to *' save " the building ? 
Describe the scene that he recalls. What three types are the 
suicides ? How does the poet know ? Why does he deny the 
failure of their lives ? Does he base his optimistic hope on rea- 
son or feeling ? Note the climax in lines 55-57. State in your 
own words the meaning of the last six lines. 

FEAKS AND SCRUPLES. (Page 74.) 

The problem of the religious doubter is here set forth by an 
analogy. 

5. letters. The reference is of course to the Scriptures. 

17 ff. In reference to sceptical criticism. 

What are the *' fears and scruples" held by the speaker? 
What proof does he desire to allay his doubts ? Does he settle 
the doubt or put it aside ? Where is his spirit of reverence best 
shown ? 



NOTES 231 

INSTANS TYRANNUS. (Page 76.) 

" Instans Tyrannus," the threatening tyrant. The phrase is 
from Horace's Odes^ Book III., iii., as is probably the idea of 
the poem. Gladstone translates the passage : — 

*' The just man in his purpose strong, 
No madding crowd can turn to wrong. 
The forceful tyrant's brow and word 



His firm-set spirit cannot move." 

There is novelty of conception in giving the situation from the 
tyrant's point of view. Compare also the seventh Ode of 
Horace in Book II. 

44. gravamen. Latin for burden, difficulty, annoyance. 

69. Just (as) my vengeance (was) complete. 

What conception do you get of the tyrant ? What is his 
motive 9 What things aggravate his hatred ? How does he 
seek to "extinguish the man"? What baffles him at first? 
What defeats him finally ? Is he deterred by physical or moral 
fear ? By what means is the poem given vigor and clearness ? 
Note the dramatic effect in the last stanza. 

THE PATRIOT. (Page 79.) 

At what point in his career does the speaker give his story ? 
What have been his motives ? How was he at first treated ? 
What indicates that the change is not in him, but in the fickle 
mob ? How does he view his downfall ? In what thought lies 
his sense of triumph ? How does his greatness of soul appear ? 



232 NOTES 

THE BOY AND THE ANGEL. (Page 81.) 

24. "the voice of my delight." That is, the boy's simple 
praises. 

What quality did the praise of the Pope and of the angel 
lack ? What is the meaning of the legend ? 

MEMORABILIA. (Page 85.) 

In Browning's early youth, while he was under the influence 
of Byron and Pope, he found, at a bookstall, a stray copy of 
Shelley's Dcemon of the World. From this time on, Shelley's 
poetry was his ideal. The term *' moulted feather" has pecul- 
iar significance from the fact that this was a poem which Shelley 
afterwards rejected. 

How is childlike wonder expressed in the first two stanzas ? 
How is the difference between the speaker and his friend indi- 
cated ? Why does the name of Shelley mean so much more to 
one than to the other ? In the figure that follows, what do the 
moor and the eagle's feather stand for ? 

WHY I AM A LIBERAL. (Page 86.) 

Note the essential elements of sonnet structure in metre, 
rhyme, and number of lines. See the Introduction to Sharp's 
Sonnets of this Century, Compare the idea of the poem with 
that of The Lost Leader. 

PROSPICE. (Page 87.) 

Written shortly after the death of Mrs. Browning. 

Note the vividness of the imagery, the swiftness of the move- 



NOTES 233 

ment, the rise to the climax, the change in spirit after the cli- 
max, and the note of courage and hope that informs this poem. 
Compare it with Tennyson's Crossing the Bar. What difference 
in spirit between the two ? 

EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO. (Page 88.) 
Sharp's Life of Browning has the following passage : "- Shortly 
before the great bell of San Marco struck ten, he turned and 
asked if any news had come concerning Asolando^ published 
that day. His son read him a telegram from the publishers, tell- 
ing how great the demand was, and how^ favorable were the 
advance articles in the leading papers. The dying poet turned 
and muttered, * How gratifying ! ' When the last toll of St. 
Mark's had left a deeper stillness than before, those by the bed- 
side saw a yet profounder silence on the face of him whom they 
loved." 

What claim does Browning make for himself ? Do you find 
this spirit in any of his poetry which you have read ? 

*'DE GUSTIBUS— ." (Page 90.) 

Image the scene in the first stanza. Why are the poppies 
known by their flutter, rather than their color? Note the 
rhyme effect and climax in lines 11-13. What qualities pre- 
dominate in the first scene ? How does the second scene differ 
from it ? What are the characteristic objects in the second ? 
Has it more or less of the romantic, or of grandeur ? Compare 
the human element introduced in each scene. Note the effec- 
tiveness of the epithets a-flutter^ wind-grieved, baked, red-rusted^ 
iron-spiked. Show how the poem explains its title. 



234 NOTES 

THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND. (Page 92.) 

The setting of the story is Italy's struggle against Austria for 
her liberty, known as the Ee volution of 1848. 

8. Charles. Carlo Alberto, Prince of Carignano, of the 
house of Savoy. 

19. Metternich (1773-1859). The Austrian diplomatist, and 
the enemy of Italian liberty. 

26. Lombardy. See the Atlas. 

76. Tenebrag = darkness. A religious service in the Koman 
Catholic church, commemorating the crucifixion. 

MY LAST DUCHESS. (Page 99.) 

Ferrara still preserves the mediaeval traditions and appearance 
in a marked degree. The Dukes of Ferrara v^ere noted art 
patrons. Both Ariosto and Tasso were members of their house- 
hold ; but neither poet was fully appreciated by his master. 

3. Fra Pandolf. An imaginary artist. 

45-46. Professor Corson, in his Introduction to Browning^ 
quotes an answer from the poet himself : '* ' Yes, I meant that 
the commands were that she should be put to death.' And 
then, after a pause, he added, with a characteristic dash of 
expression, as if the thought had just started in his mind, ' Or 
he might have had her shut up in a convent.' " 

56. Claus of Innsbruck. An imaginary artist. 

This poem is a fine example of Browning's skill in the use of 
dramatic monologue. (See Introduction. ) The Duke is skil- 
fully made to reveal his own character and motives, and those 



NOTES 235 

of the Duchess, and at the same time to indicate the actions oi 
himself and his listener. 

Construct in imagination the scene and the action of the 
poem. What has brought the Duke and the envoy together ? 
What things indicate the Duke's pride ? Was his jealousy due 
to pride or to affection ? Does he prize the picture as a work of 
art or as a memory of the Duchess ? What faults did he find in 
her? What character do these criticisms show her to have 
had ? What did he wish her to be ? Note the anti-climax in 
lines 25-28 : what is the effect ? What shows the Duke's diffi- 
culty in breaking his reserve on this matter ? What motive has 
he for so doing ? Where does the poet show skill in condensa- 
tion, in character drawing, in vividness, in enlisting the read- 
er's sympathy ? 

The Flight of the Duchess should be read as a development 
and variation of this theme. 

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S. 

(Page 101.) 

Ruskin gives this poem high praise: "Robert Browning is 
unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages. . . . 
I know no other piece of modern English prose or poetry in 
which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance 
spirit — its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, igno- 
rance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is 
nearly all that I have said of the central Renaissance, in thirty 
pages of The Stones of Venice^ put into as many lines ; Brown- 
ing's also being the antecedent work." 

It is not, however, for its historical accuracy that a poem is 



236 NOTES 

mainly to be judged. The full and imaginative portrayal of a 
type, belonging not to one age only, but to human nature, is a 
greater achievement. And this achievement Browning has 
undoubtedly performed. 

6. Old Gandolf. Evidently one of the Bishop's colleagues in 
holy orders, and like him in holiness. 

31. onion-stone. See the dictionary for descriptions of this 
and other stones named in the poem. 

41. olive-frail. A crate, made of rushes, for packing olives. 

42. lapis lazuli. A very beautiful and valuable blue stone. 
46. Frascati. A town near Rome, celebrated for its villas. 
56-62. Such mixture of Christian and Pagan elements was a 

common feature in Renaissance art and literature. 

68. tripod. The triple-footed seat from which the priest- 
esses of Apollo at Delphi delivered the oracles, thyrsus. A 
staff entwined with ivy and vines, and borne in the Bacchic 
processions. 

77. Tully. Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman orator, states- 
man, and philosopher. 

79. Ulpian. A celebrated Roman jurist of the third century. 

99. Elucescebat. Late Latin, from elucesco. The classical 
or Ciceronian form would be elucebat, from eluceo. Here 
appears the Bishop's love of good Latin. 

108. Term. A pillar, widening toward the top, upon which 
is placed a figure or a bust. 

Who are grouped about the Bishop's bed? What does he 
desire ? Why ? What tastes does he show ? Point out evi- 



NOTES 237 

dences of his crimes, his suspicion, his sensual ideals, his artis- 
tic tastes, his canting hypocrisy, his confusion of the material 
and the immaterial, and the persistency of his passions and 
feelings. Note the subtlety with which these things are sug- 
gested, especially lines 18-19, 29-30, 33-44, 50-62, 59-62, 80-84, 
122-125. 

THE LABORATORY. (Page 107.) 

This is a little masterpiece in its vividness and condensation. 
The passions of hate and jealousy have seldom been so well por- 
trayed. The time and place are probably France and the six- 
teenth or seventeenth century. Berdoe has called attention in 
his Browning Cyclopaedia to the number of fine antitheses in the 
second stanza. 

Who are present in the scene ? Who are to be the victims ? 
Account for the speaker's j9a^/e wee in stanza iii. Point out the 
things that show the intensity of her hate. Does she display 
any other feeling than hate and jealousy ? 

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD. (Page 109.) 

Where is the speaker ? What scene is in his imagination ? 
Trace the growth in his mind of this scene : in color effects, in 
the kind of life introduced, in the intensity of the feeling, in 
the vividness with which he enters into it. What is the charm 
in lines 12-14 ? 

UP AT A VILLA— DOWN IN THE CITY. (Page 110.) 

4. Bacchus. The Roman god of wine, frequently invoked in 
the garnishment of Latin and Italian speech. 



238 NOTES 

42. Pulcinello is the Italian for clown or puppet, and the 
prototype of the English Punch. 

48. Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch. Italy's first three great 
authors. See a biographical dictionary or encyclopaedia for 
their dates and their works. 

St. Jerome (340-420.) One of the fathers of the Roman 
church. He prepared the Latin translation of the Bible known 
as the Vulgate. 

49. the skirts of St. Paul has reached. Has done almost as 
well as St. Paul. 

51. Our Lady. The image of the Virgin Mary. Observe our 
hero's taste and his religious solemnity. 

52. seven swords, etc. Representing the seven ''legendary 
sorrows" of the Virgin. See Berdoe's Broioning Cyclopce- 
dia, or Brewer's Beader'^s Handbook^ or Dictionary of Phrase 
and Fable for the list. 

Up at a Villa is one of the best humorous poems in the lan- 
guage. The hero's desires and sorrows are so na'ive^ his tastes 
so gravely held, that he provokes our sympathy as well as our 
laughter. One of the charms of the poem is the way in which 
he is made to testify, in spite of himself, to the beauties of the 
country (as in lines 7-9, 19-20, 22-25, 32-33, 36) and to the 
monotony or clanging emptiness of the city (as in lines 12-14, 
38-54). Compare lines 8 and 32 with the picture in De 
Giistibus, 



NOTES 239 

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S. (Page 116.) 

Toccata. See an unabridged dictionary. 

1. Galuppi. Baldassare Galuppi, Venice, 1706-1785, a cele- 
brated musician and prolific composer. 

6. St. Mark^s. The famous cathedral of Venice. Doges . . . 
rings. The Doge was chief magistrate of Venice. The annual 
ceremony of " wedding the Adriatic " by casting into it a gold 
ring was instituted in 1174, in commemoration of the victory of 
the Venetian fleet over Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of Ger- 
many. 

8. Shylock's bridge. By the Rialto. A house by the bridge, 
said to be Shylock's, is still pointed out to visitors. 

18. clavichord. An instrument of the type of the piano. 

19 ff. thirds, sixths, etc. For the musical terms see an una- 
bridged dictionary or a musical dictionary. 

30. Compare the lines in Fitzgerald's translation of the 
Bubaiyat : — 

" For some we loved, the loveliest and the best 
That from his vintage rolling Time hath prest, 
Have drmik their cup a round or two before, 
And one by one crept silently to rest." 

This is the characteristic note of poetic melancholy, found 
again and again from Virgil to Tennyson. 

37-39. Is the ironical tone of these lines in harmony with 
the spirit of the rest of the poem ? 

What does Galuppi's music mean to Browning? What does 
it recall of the life in Venice ? Is the lightness of tone in the 
music itself or in the poet's idea of Venice ? What emotions 



240 NOTES 

are aroused ? What causes the poet's sadness ? Is the verse 
musical ? Does it suit the ideas it conveys ? 

ABT VOGLER. (Page 120.) 

George Joseph Yogler, known also as Abb^ (or Abt) Vogler 
(1749-1816), was a German musician. He composed operas 
and other musical pieces, became famous as an organist, and 
invented an organ with pedals and several keyboards. Brown- 
ing seems to have in mind the complex musical harmonies of 
which the instrument was capable. See lines 10, 13, 52, 55, and 
84 of the poem. See also the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 

3. Solomon. Legends about Solomon and his power over the 
spirits of earth and air are common in Jewish and Arabic liter- 
ature. 

9 ff. building. The idea of building by music is an old one. 
See the classical story of Amphion and the walls of Thebes, 
Coleridge's Kubla Khan^ and Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette^ 
lines 272-274. 

19. rampired. Furnished with ramparts. 

23. The reference is to St. Peter's in Rome. 

The musician's imagination takes fire from his playing, and 
his music seems like a glorious palace which he is building. 
The notes are conceived as spirits doing his bidding (stanzas 
i-iii). As he proceeds the images change, and heaven and 
earth seem to unite with him in his creative activity ; light 
flashes forth, and heaven and earth draw nearer together. 
Now he sees the past, the beginnings of things, and the future ; 
even the dead are back again in his presence. His imagination 



NOTES 241 

has anuUed time and space. As he thinks of his art, it seems 
more glorious to him than painting and poetry : these work by 
laws that can be explained and followed, while music is a direct 
expression of the will, an act of higher creative power. 

When the music ends he cannot be consoled by the thought 
that as good music will come again. So he turns to the one 
unchanging thing, "the ineffable Name." Thus he gains confi- 
dence to say, " there shall never be one lost good." All failure 
and all evil are but a prelude to the good that shall in the end 
prevail. So he returns in hope and patience to the C major, 
the common chord of life. 

Abt Yogler is famous, not only for its confident optimism, 
but as an example of Browning's power of annexing a new 
domain — that of music — to poetry. 

Where does the musician cease to speak of Solomon's build- 
ing and begin to describe his own ? Note, in stanza ii, how he 
speaks first of the "keys," and afterwards has in mind the 
notes ; how he speaks of the bass notes as the foundation, and 
the upper notes as the structure. Where is the climax of his 
creative vision ? What does he mean in line 40 ? Is he right in 
saying music is less subject to laws than poetry and painting ? 
Why is he sad when his music ceases ? Why does he turn to 
God for consolation ? Follow carefully the argument in stanza 
ix. Is it convincing? What analogy does he find between 
music, and good and evil ? 

RABBI BEN EZRA. (Page 127.) 

Abraham Ben Meir Ben Ezra, into whose mouth Browning 
puts the reflections in this poem, was born in Toledo, Spain, in 

R 



242 NOTES 

1090, and died about 1168. He was distinguished as philoso- 
pher, astronomer, physician, and poet. The ideas of the poem 
are drawn largely from the writings of Rabbi Ben Ezra. See 
Berdoe's Browning Cyclopcedia. 

1. Grow old along with me. Come, and let us talk of old 
age. 

7-15. Not that. Connect ''not that " of lines 7 and 10, and 
the " not for, etc.," of 13, with " Do I remonstrate " in line 15. 

29. hold of. Are like, share the nature of. 

39-41. Compare A Grammarian'' s Funeral. 

117. be named. That is, known, or distinguished. 

124. Was I (whom) the world arraigned. Browning fre- 
quently omits the relative. 

139-144. Compare lines 39-41. Note here and elsewhere in 
this poem the frequent repetition and variation of the same idea. 

151. Potter's wheel. The figure of the Potter'' s wheel is fre- 
quent in Oriental literature. See Isaiah Ixiv. 8, and Jeremiah 
xviii. 2-6 ; see also Fitzgerald's Buhaiyat, stanzas xxxvii, 
xxxviii, Ixxxii-xc. 

169-171. In the period of youth. 

172-174. In old age. 

What cares agitate youth ? Why is it better so ? Wherein 
does man partake of the nature of God ? What plea is made 
for the " value and significance of flesh " ? Show how Brown- 
ing denies the doctrine of asceticism. What is meant by " the 
whole design," line 56? Why does Rabbi Ben Ezra pause at 
the threshold of old age ? What has youth achieved ? What 



NOTES 243 

advantage has old age ? What are its pleasures ? Its employ- 
ments ? Explain the figure in lines 91-5. By what are the man 
and his work to be judged ? Compare the use of the figure of 
the Potter's wheel with that in the Old Testament. What has 
Browning added ? Point out the element of optimism in the 
poem. How does its view of old age differ from the pagan 
view ? See Browning's Cleon. 

A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL. (Page 137.) 

The Grammarian is a type of the early scholars who gave to 
Europe the treasures of Greek thought by translating the man- 
uscripts recovered after the fall of Constantinople. The time is 
therefore the Renaissance, the latter part of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and the place probably Italy. The Grammarian was a 
scholar and thinker, not a mere student of grammar in the 
modern sense. 

23. Our low life. Lacking the learning and high endeavor 
of their master. 

45-46. the world bent on escaping. That is, the world of the 
past. 

48. shaping, their mind and character. 

97-98. Compare with lines 65-72, 77-84, and 103-4. 

129-131. The Greek particles ort, ovv, and be. 

Describe the scene and action of the poem. Note the march- 
like and irregular movement of the verse : does it fit the 
theme ? Why do they carry the Grammarian up from the 
plain ? What was his work ? What was his aim ? What is 
the value of such work (1) in presenting an ideal of life, (2) in 



244 NOTES 

the history of culture ? What circumstances in his life enhance 
his praise ? Did he make any mistake ? Does Browning think 
so ? How does Browning defend him ? What imagery in the 
poem seems especially effective ? Are you reminded of any- 
thing in '' Rabbi Ben Ezra " ? Criticise the rhymes and metre. 

ANDREA DEL SARTO. {^agy, 143.) 

An Italian painter, of the Florentine school ; born 1487, died 
1531. His merits and defects as an artist are given in the poem. 
The crime to which he is here made to refer was the use, for 
building himself a house, of the money intrusted to him by the 
French king for the purchase of works of art. For an account 
of his life and work see the article in the Encyclopoddia Britan- 
nica, and Yasari's Lives of the Fainters. 

15. Fiesole (pronounced Fe-a-so-le). A small Italian town 
near Florence. 

119. Rafael. The great painter, Raphael (1483-1520). 

130. Agnolo. Michael Angelo (1475-1564), one of Italy's 
greatest men : famous as sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. 

150. Fontainebleau. A town southeast of Paris, formerly 
the residence of French kings, and still famous for its Renais- 
sance architecture and for the landscapes around it. 

241. scudi. The scudo is an Italian silver coin worth about 
one dollar, 

263. Leonard. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), another of 
Italy's great men : artist, poet, musician, and scientist. 

Construct the scene and action of the poem. How does the 
coloring harmonize with the artist's mood ? Why is he weary ? 



NOTES 245 

How does he think of his art : what merit has it ? What does 
it lack ? How does he explain this lack ? What clew to it does 
his life afford ? Is his art soulless because he has done wrong ? 
Or, do the lack of soul in his painting, and the wrongdoing, 
and the infatuation with Lucrezia's beauty, all arise from the 
same thing, — the man's own nature ? Does he appeal to your 
sympathy, or provoke your condemnation ? Does he blame 
himself, or another, or circumstances ? 

What idea have you of Lucrezia ? What does she think of 
Andrea ? Of his art ? What things does he desire of her ? 

What problems of life are here presented ? Which is princi- 
pal : the relation of man and woman, the need of soul for great 
work, or the interrelation between character and achievement ? 
Or, is there something else for which the poem stands ? 

Can you cite any lines that embody the main idea of the 
poem ? Does anything in it remind you of The Grammarian^ 
or of Babbi Ben Ezra ? 

CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS. (Page 155.) 

Setebos was the god of Caliban's mother, the witch Sycorax, 
on Prospero's island. 

Read Shakespeare's The Tempest. Observe especially all 
that is said by or about Caliban. Observe that Browning 
makes Caliban usually speak of himself in the third person, and 
prefixes an apostrophe to the initial verb, as in the first line. 

Tylor's Primitive Culture and Early History of Manki)id 
give interesting accounts of the religions of savages. 

How is Caliban's savage nature indicated in the opening 
scene ? What things does he think Setebos has made ? From 



246 NOTES 

what motives ? What limit to the power of Setebos ? Why- 
does Caliban imagine these limits ? How does Setebos govern ? 
Out of what materials does Caliban build his conceptions of his 
deity ? Why does he fear him ? How does he propitiate him ? 
Why is he terrified at the end ? Compare this passage with 
the latter part of the Book of Job. What, in general, is tlie 
meaning of the poem ? Can you cite anything in the history of 
religions to parallel Caliban's theology ? 

''CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME." 

(Page 168.) 

When Browning was asked by Rev. Dr. J. W. Chadwick 
whether the central idea of this poem was constancy to an 
ideal, — "He that endureth to the end shall be saved," — he 
answered, "Yes, just about that." 

4-5. to afford suppression of. To suppress. 

11. 'gin write. Write. 

48. its astray. That is, Childe Roland himself. 

66. my prisoners. Those who had met their death on the 
plain. 

68. bents. A kind of grass. 

70. as. As if. 

91. Not it ! Memory did not give hope and solace. 

106. howlet. A small owl. 

114. bespate. Spattered. 

133. cirque. A circle or enclosure. 

137. galley-slaves whom the Turk, etc. 



NOTES 247 

140. engine. Machine. ^ 

143. Tophet. Hell. 

160. Apollyon. The Devil. 

Note the hero's mood of doubt and despair. At what point 
in his quest do we see him ? What does he do after meeting 
the cripple ? How does the landscape seem as he goes on ? 
What moral quality does it seem to have ? See lines 56-75. 
What new elements are introduced to add to the horror of the 
scene ? What memories come to him of the failures of his 
friends ? Was their disgrace in physical or moral failure ? 
How does he come to find the Tower ? How does Browning 
represent it as a--" dark tower" ? Does his courage fail at the 
end of his quest ? Or does he win the victory in finding the 
tower and blowing the challenge ? 

AN EPISTLE. (Page 177.) 

The Arabs were among the earliest in the cultivation of 
mathematical and medical science. This fact, together with 
their monotheism, makes Karshish an appropriate character 
for the experience of the poem. 

1-14. An ancient and oriental idea of the soul and its rela- 
tion to the body. 

15. Sage. Abib, to whom the letter is sent. 

17. snake-stone. A stone used to cure snake-bites. 

19. charms. Note here and elsewhere the mixture of science 
and superstition. 

21-33. The poet has given local color to the journey. 



248 NOTES 

28. Vespasian was appointed general-in-cliief against tlie 
insurgent Jews in 67 a.d. , and began the great siege of Jerusa- 
lem, in 70 A.D. The date of the poem and the lengtli of time 
since Lazarus' s return to life may thus be estimated. 

37-38. Note the vividness gained by making Karshish keep 
the physician's point of view. 

44. falling-sickness , . . cure. Epilepsy. Karshish is al- 
ready admitting into his letter the story of Lazarus. 

48. Not only spiders, but many other animals or parts of 
animals were formerly used as medicines. 

64-65. Karshish, still half ashamed of his interest in the mar- 
vellous story he has to tell, first gives this as a pretext, and then, 
in the next lines confesses. 

171 ff. Belief in magic survived in some degree among the 
educated until a century or two ago. 

177. Greek-fire. Aviolently inflammable substance, supposed 
to have been a compound of naphtha, sulphur, and nitre, which 
was hurled against the enemy in battle. As it was first used 
in 673, in the siege of Constantinople, Browning is guilty of an 
unimportant anachronism. 

252-255. A good touch, to make the earthquake mean to 
Karshish an omen of the gravest event within his ken. 

268-269. Karshish, still unconvinced by the story of Lazarus, 
naturally regards it as irreverent. 

304-311. This comes to Karshish as an afterthought, a corol- 
lary to the idea in the body of the poem. 

How is the general style of the verse-letter maintained? 



NOTES 249 

What is KarsMsh's mission in Judea ? How does he ^how his 
devotion to his art ? Point out instances of local color. Are 
they in harmony with the main current of the poem, or do they 
detract from the interest in the story ? Why does Karshish 
work up to his story so diffidently ? Why has the incident 
taken such hold upon him ? What do you conceive to be his 
character and worth as a man ? 

What of Lazarus ? What change has been wrought in him ? 
Is he in any way unfitted for this life ? To what does Karshish 
compare him, with his sudden wealth of insight behind the veil 
of the next world ? Which of the two men is better fitted for 
the condition in which he is placed ? What religious signifi- 
cance does the story of Lazarus come to have to Karshish ? 
What parallel ideas do you find in Rabbi Ben Ezra and in this 
poem ? Compare George Eliot's story, The Lifted Veil. 

SAUL. (Page 190.) 

This is generally regarded as one of Browning's greatest 
poems. Even his detractors concede to it beauty of form, 
fervor of feeling, and richness of imagery. The incident upon 
which it is based is found in 1 Samuel, chapter xvi. Saul is 
in the depths of mental eclipse, and David has been summoned 
to cure him by music. The young shepherd sings to him first 
the songs that appeal to the gentle animals ; then the songs 
that men use in their human relationships, — songs of labor, 
of the wedding-feast, of the burial-service, of worship ; then 
he sings the joy of physical life, ending in an appeal to the am- 
bition of King Saul. Saul is roused, but not yet brought to 
will to live. So David sings anew of the life of the spirit, the 



250 NOTES 

spirit of Saul living for his people. Then a touch of tenderness 
from the king flashes into David a prophetic insight : If he, the 
imperfect, would do so much for love of Saul, what would God, 
the all-perfect, do for men ? And so he reaches the conception 
of the Christ, the incarnation. 

The poem is full of echoes of the Old Testament, fused with 
the spirit of modern Christianity and modern thinking. It is 
touched here and there with bits of beauty from Oriental land- 
scape. The long, even swell of the lines carries one along with 
no sense of the roughness so common in Browning's verse. 
Rising by steady degrees to the climax, we feel, like David, 
some sense of the "terrible glory," some sense of the unseen 
presences that hovered around him as he made his way home 
in the night. 



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